A New Dawn
by raidensokwl
Summary: During the end of the Age of Technology, the Emperor interferes in the fall of humanity. Because of this, a small group of humanity is launched into the distant stars as there civilisation crumbles to dust. 15,000 years later, that remnant of those times returns into the fold, better than they were millennia ago into a galaxy ravaged by war. New Faction, yeyeyey.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own Warhammer in any form or way. Games Workshop does.**

* * *

><p><strong>Earth, Sol System, Segmentum Solar, 178.M25<strong>

From the view her window could give her, Marianne could see various gravity cars soar through the sky towards whatever destinations they were heading to. Judging by the time showing on the age-old grandfather clock in her office, it was just past rush hour, everyone was rushing to get back home.

The sun glinted of the towering buildings that rose into the sky, made by the hands of humans, each tower yearning to touch the sky with their immense height. A veritable man-made concrete jungle was everywhere, no matter where you looked, even though the compound known as concrete had been replaced as a material for building various millennia ago. But even through this jungle, there was still signs of green in the city, entire areas, tens of kilometres in length and width were solely dedicated for trees and various other flora and vegetation.

It was beautiful, truly beautiful. Even though this city was one of many, here on Earth and hundreds of other stars in the galaxy where humanity had made its home.

...And to think this site would be nothing more than a smouldering, battle-ruined landscape soon. What a shame, an utter travesty.

'I better stop ignoring him now.' Marianne thought as she continued to look out through her window. The glint of the sun on her window allowed her reflection to be shown through the window, blonde hair swept neatly to the side, a face that was starting to show the marks of age, belying her true age and firm brown eyes and thin lips.

The window didn't only just reflect her appearance, it also slightly reflected her office, to reveal that she wasn't the only one in it. The other person being a man with a rather inscrutable expression on their face and icy blue eyes dressed in dark blue military officer dress.

The cup of tea in front of him hadn't even been touched and the light plumes of steam it had originally expelled were long gone, a testament to how long he had been sitting in his seat for. And how long Marianne had been idly ignoring the matter at hand to have a look over the city.

She turned her body to face the man and made her way towards the large leather chair that sat opposite the man on the other side of the desk, "I hope I haven't made you wait for long." She said as she took her seat, arms resting on the armrests.

"Not at all," The man said with a light shake of the head, "I'm sure you had a lot to think about." He said with a slight tone of sarcasm in his voice.

If it had been anyone else, they would have been reprimanded for such a thing, especially with their superior officer in this case, but it didn't matter. She allowed him this reprieve simply because she warranted it, he had been sitting there, waiting for her to say something, to start the proceedings as to why he was here, for nearly half an hour. If it had been her, she would have been rather annoyed and had shown it to in some way or form, especially if she had something important to share.

She didn't even have to think about the words that she was going to speak next. They had flown out of her mouth so many times by now it was just an automatic response, "How bad is it now?"

"Do you want me to give it in detail or just summarize it for you?"

She grimaced, "That bad?" She asked. She was beginning to loathe every single meeting she had with some type of military official, it always ended up showing their losses, there where no gains, no victories, nothing but losses.

"Victoria, Elysium and Midgard have declared independence."

Victoria, Elysium and Midgard had declared independence? Not one, not even two, but three Core worlds and systems had decided to branch out and try it on their own, taking along with them their vast economies and probably, definitely their fleets and armies?

Marianne stayed quiet as she had this. She was as calm, cool and composed at hearing this. Those three worlds weren't going to be the first Core worlds to secede from the Federation, many had already done so, and with this, many more will probably secede from the Federation. It was just a matter of time.

But inside, she wanted to scream, she wanted to rage, she just wanted to do something, something to show her entire and utter displeasure at the course of action that was happening throughout the realm of Man. Hell, she just wanted to punch the Senators and Governors of those worlds square in the face for pulling off this stunt.

"Great…" She said underneath her breath, her voice nothing more than a whisper, the official in front of her barely hearing her at all, "This is just great." She said, sarcasm in all its entirety evident in her voice. When news of this spread, which it will, even if the government tried to censor it, people will panic and more worlds will soon go. She would have wanted to make an example of those three words by quickly retaking them into the Federation's fold, and executing the perpetrators behind this secession, maybe even live to just to hammer in home what happens to traitors to the Federal Declaration, but it wasn't to be.

The Navy's fleets and the soldiers of the Army were stretched in battle against already established rebel systems and the Orkoids have been making more and more raids into Federal space due to manpower being diverged towards those fleets needing it. They already had to abandon several systems due to the infeasibility of actually being able to hold them, especially since they didn't want Federal rule marshalled over them.

She tilted her head back and let out a heavy sigh, this entire series of events was starting to make her feel her age. Not the age her body shown, but the full brunt of her one hundred and seventy-four years of existence.

She glanced towards the official, quietly sitting in his chair, looking at her with the same inscrutable look on his face. This must have been nothing more than just another day in the office with him, "There's more isn't there?"

Much to her complete and utter ire, he nodded, "Warp storms have been increasing in intensity. Communication and FTL travel is becoming harder and harder with each passing minute. We've already lost contact with several fleets and worlds in the outer sectors because of this."

And the bad news just kept on coming. It felt like there was just no end to this, nothing that could be done to stop the realm of man crumbling, 'At least we aren't going out like the Eldar.' She mused rather grimly, even if it was at the expense of a civilisation and race that was far older than humanity itself.

Reports had been coming in from all over Eldar space of the races' mighty planet-sized craftworld ships making for the stars, as far away from Eldar space as possible. Each ship carrying millions of millions of Eldar that were rushing to leave the once glorious, galactic spanning empire.

She couldn't really fault them, if even half of the things going on in the empire were true, they would be making a beeline for the stars too. That sort of civilisation decay hit too many balls close to home as far as humanity were concerned. For all they knew, that could have been them millennia ago.

'Well whatever, what happens to the space elves isn't my problem.' It wasn't as if the race had many approaches to be friends with humanity in any sort of manner. And whatever little contact they had, it always ended up with the Eldar looking down on humanity, figuratively and literally, 'I've got my own problems to deal with.'

She locked eyes with the man in front of her, "Admiral, since the Warp doesn't seem like its going to be feasible when it comes to communication and FTL, switch to subspace."

The man raised an eyebrow, "Warp space _isn't_ that bad yet to make such a...drastic change."

"I rather not take my chances." Marianne said, "And don't worry so much. We might have discarded subspace as a means of travel and communication millennia ago when we discovered Warp space, but that doesn't mean research on the subject was just scrapped and thrown out of the nearest window. That would have been asinine."

Even when the far faster and safer option of Warp space was discovered, there were still many people that continued researching on this form of FTL travel. Especially even more so when the rather volatile phenomenon known as Warp storms and its effect on communication and travel was discovered. Even still, with advances in that field of FTL, the vast majority of people still preferred Warp over subspace travel, simply because it was far faster by a large amount.

The admiral stood up from his seat, "That's all I have to report Madame President. I'll make my leave." He said with a slight bow before turning as he made his way towards the exit.

Marianne watched him leave before turning her chair round to look out the window some more. She had the feeling that the bad-times were just beginning, and that far worse was coming to visit humanity in the future. Instincts were a part of human nature and it would have been foolhardy not to follow them.

She would have loved to just to face this future, but as the Federation splintered off bit by bit, block by block, whatever trouble in the future that was coming, humanity wouldn't even be anywhere near ready for it.

XxX

(Himalayan Mountains - Nepal Region)

Among a monastery located high in the mountains of Nepal, a man sat in silent consolation as he meditated. The man seemed to be of Arabic descent as he had long black hair, olive coloured skin and behind closed eyelids, dark-coloured eyes. He wore simple monk robes to cover his giant build.

He had lived for far older than any human being had the right to live, but he did. Simply because of who he was, a guardian of humanity, the man who had used his ancient wisdom to guide humanity through the ages of time.

But even now, his ability to guide and protect humanity was being called to question. With his supernatural abilities, he knew that something of a malicious nature was growing in the warp, something that would have the power to join its elder compatriots as 'Gods' of the realm known as the Warp.

And his birth would soon herald the dark times and possible end of humanity.

He knew well enough that this golden age, this remarkable age that humanity had found itself in through its hardwork and perseverance was slowly coming undone. The government that ruled over the various colonies of humanity was losing its power every single day. Planets were breaking off in seek of their own destiny.

This shouldn't have happened. Humanity would fare far better in the coming dark days if they were a civilisation of one. But that seemed unlikely, the terrible undercurrents of human nature was showing itself in the minds of the ambitious.

Maybe with or without the help of the Chaos Gods themselves…

This entire scenario had brought him here, what could he do about such a thing? He couldn't just reveal himself to the world and humanity as a whole as he was now. All he would be seen as is another psyker with delusions of grandeur, even if his potent psychic abilities made other powerful psychic look nothing more than child's play.

No, he couldn't do that, another course of action would have to be taken, but what type of action would be the question he needed an answer to.

He went further in his meditation in search of that answer. There had to be something he could do to make humanity survive the coming age, something that would change their future fortunes, no matter how small that change could be.

And his eyes opened, he could do that. Yes, he could do that, but how would he convey his idea to the right people? He had never taken positions of power or had the need to in the past few millennia. Humanity had progressed magnificently without him in age of reason and science.

...Maybe he didn't have to tell someone of his idea, maybe he could make someone think it was theirs to begin with. That was well within the scope of his abilities.

But this course of action was of an uneasy sort to him. For all he knew, he could be damning how many souls to the furthest reaches of space where even his psionic power couldn't reach. But it was better than doing nothing.

And who knew? Maybe these souls could survive and flourish in space.

Yes, he could do that, now all he had to do was reach…

XxX

(Sometime Later - Presidential Palace - Conference Room)

Marianne sat in her seat at the head of a conference table. In the room, and seated around their table in their own seats were her top advisers and military commanders. They had been in this room for nearly a full hour and they had been going through the general updates and reports that was something of a staple in the government.

The meeting would soon meet its ends and she was going to have to share her big idea some time with this group of people. This group that was composed of some of the best and brightest humanity had to offer.

Even though she wanted to, she just felt somewhat odd at the suggestion she was about to bring forth onto the table. It just seemed so...far out of there in terms of thinking, that she didn't exactly know how it came into her mind.

She had refused to believe she could think about that, before slowly, the idea started warming up to her. This was definitely something that could be classified as a 'doomsday scenario' sort of idea. The type that people in power made when they realised things weren't going to work out.

And if anything, Marianne was anything but a pragmatist and she knew things for the Federation weren't going to work out in the long run. The intergalactic government now had a limited shelf-life, and as vexing as it was, she didn't know how long that shelf-life was going to be. For all she knew, it could be far in the future or just a couple of days now.

In the end, it was better to have something than nothing in the works. So it was time to finally bring the subject forth.

"Ladies and gentlemen," She spoke, gaining the attention of the various people in the room who had been going through their own reports in preparation for the next subject on the matter, "I know that we have to worry about the state of our civilisation but what I'm about to say might seem like madness, but just for peace of mind, hear me out."

That got the attention of the people in the room. They turned to her, giving her their undivided attention. And she spoke, she pitched to them the idea that had somehow formed in her head whilst she had been in her musings in her house.

Of course, she had expected the reaction that she was receiving from the people in the room as they just looked at her as if she had gone and suddenly grown an extra head, or in other cases, grown utterly mad with what she was proposing.

Her head economic adviser finally broke the silence as he spoke, "Madame President," He spoke in an unsure tone, as if he wasn't sure of exactly what he wanted to say, "I don't think we should consider such an action. It's not as if the Federation is in such dire straits to do...something so Eldar-like." Because what she was proposing was essentially what some of the Eldar were doing.

"And I doubt we have the technology to build planet-sized ships." One of her other advisers quipped in. For as much as humanity had advanced, something of that scale was still just a little out of their league.

Marianne shook her head, "I'm not saying we should do it now. I'm saying we should at least have that option. A contingency plan."

"Which in truthfulness," Another adviser spoke up, "Is quite mad and completely irrational. Something you wouldn't expect from you Madame President."

Marianne shook her head, "I know, but we should at least have that safety valve just in case."

One of her advisers of the military kind, the second highest ranking officer in the entirety of the Armed Services, General of the Army Ravi Samira finally decided to speak, "I'm all for it." He noticed eyes turn to him and decided to give his reasons, "We're lucky at the moment that the rebels are too busy fighting against each other or that the Warp storms are interfering with their plans of expansion...if they have any. But eventually, there will come a time when the storms will have to stop, maybe decades from now, maybe even days, and then, those rebels will clearly sooner or later decide to turn their eyes towards Earth." He turned to look at each and every one of his compatriots in the eyes, "Let's be honest, for any would-be emperor or despot, Earth is the center of human civilisation. Holding it means holding the entirety of human space."

"You make it sound as if any of these rebel planets have the manpower to actually try and go against the Home Fleet."

The Home Fleet was singlehandedly the largest fleet in the entirety of the Federation, tasked with protecting the home system of humanity from anyone who wished to harm it. Luckily, that had been no-one with enough power behind them to defeat the other fleets that were between whatever threat that existed and the Home Fleet itself.

Samira merely shrugged, "Eventually someone's going to try." He said with a voice full of conviction that such a situation was plausible...and he sort of was. There wasn't any indication that no-one would eventually try going for the birthplace of mankind, "And who knows? By then, that someone might have the fleets of several systems underneath them and the Federation could be nothing more than a token of planets with the way some are seceding."

What he said was rather grim and dark, but at the same time, it was entirely truthful. Such a scenario could occur, and the Federation might find itself hard-pressed to protect itself from such ambitions.

So maybe, just maybe, it was always good to have a so far out of the way emergency contingency plan, as a just in case.

Marianne looked at her advisers and commanders, whatever doubts she had about this course of action gone from her eyes, "I want plans mapped up and drawn up. I'll be damned if I went through history as the person who could have saved the Federation but didn't because of some out of the way possibility."

XxX

**900.M25**

The Warp storms never subsided but instead continued to grow and increase in intensity. Entire worlds and systems were cut off from the rest of human space. Seceded worlds and Federation-held worlds.

Even though humanity had used a secondary form of FTL travel and communication, compared to Warp space, it was wholly insufficient as the distance travelled was substantially smaller than Warp-enabled travel. Because of this, it became harder and harder to supply the large ecumenopolis worlds like Earth with supplies from Agriculture Worlds (Agri-Worlds). Food began to be rationed as those worlds own food production facilities couldn't meet with the demand of large populations.

Seeing that sooner or later, civil discontent would form that would cover the whole planet and maybe even civil war, President Gunhurst decided to enact a plan that had been made by his distant predecessors in government in case a situation of collapse of government was imminent.

Through the remaining Federation-held worlds and space, secret dockyards and facilities had been built to build large fleet of advanced ships that would carry only a small number of humanity to the edge of the galaxy to recolonize and rebuild and then after gaining sufficient strength, return and recapture former human worlds and bring them into one unified rule.

From across those worlds still in contact, the best and brightest of humanity, the foremost experts in their own fields of whether the Physical sciences, the newly emerging metaphysical sciences, social sciences and various other fields were gathered and told of what was to come. Some refused, others accepted only with stipulations such as family came with them. This was to be expected, but officials went about doing their task of gathering the right people for this job.

After that had been done, a large amount of civilians, numbering in the millions were chosen by lottery to be the new colonizers of a suitable planet once found with the lucky civilians being able to bring their families with them. And if humanity came across situations where security was needed, those same dockyards created the most advanced battleships humanity had to offer that will go on to serve as a new incarnation of the Federations own armed forces if the original finally fell.

No expense had been spared to this massive project. Through the years since it came into conception, various government funds would be directed towards projects and organisations that didn't exist to fund this operation.

Every iota of human history, art, knowledge, technology and science humanity had achieved was stored and placed in the ships with each new discovery being added. All engineerings feats placed into several STCs.

And with Warp becoming increasingly unstable, more research was made into subspace FTL to increase its FTL travel capabilities. But even when the time eventually came for those ships to utilise the new engines given to them, it would take some considerable amount of time for the ships to reach the edge of the galaxy and such all colony ships were built and designed with the thought of them acting as generation ships in some capacity even with the extended life spans humans enjoyed.

Eventually, the day of departure arrived as more and more feelings of discontent increased before transforming into full blown riots.

This mass exodus of a token amount of humanity in the wider scheme of things was conducted in secret, if it had been public, it would have been aptly named as the Great Exodus.

**Galactic Edge, Eastern Fringe, 105.M26**

After years of travel among the Exodus Fleet, bypassing many habitable worlds as they continued towards the destination of the galactic edge, into the galactic unknown by human and Eldar standards, sensor probes and drones periodically sent out from the various exploration ships sent back information of a habitable planet, suitable to hold human life.

With this planet in mind, the Fleet made course for it, oblivious to the fact that an Age of Strife had fallen the human civilisation that they had left behind. Even the might Federation had fallen.

**106.M26**

The Fleet eventually arrived on the planet that would become to be named Gaia by its colonists, a planet three times the size of Earth. Terraforming is immediately started on the planet to make it more habitable for humanity with slight changes in the atmospheric gases.

Various Earth-native fauna and flora are introduced to the rather sparse fauna and flora of the planet itself.

Luck would have it that Gaia was orbited by three moons, one rich in ores, another having an atmosphere and the other being simply, a large hollow meteorite that was dragged into the planet's orbit by gravity.

Plans were immediately drawn up for the uses of these three moons, with the military deciding to take the meteorite for itself to serve as a base.

The newly discovered system is named Sol Invictus.

**895.M26**

Humanity had settled well into their new system and colonised habitable moons or worlds and had spread to neighbouring systems and colonised them as well. With thoughts of how human civilisation had fared in the past during its expansion, the Federation expands at a slow pace, making sure its new worlds firmly in Federal grip without extending their force too much to be seen as dictators or tyrants.

Human technology and innovation continues to increase after a period of stagnation. Interest is turned towards the humans who have connections to the Warp and able to use it to manifest abilities in this dimension as they increase in number slowly over the years.

Humanity continues to see the advantages of these new human beings can bring and continue their studies on the subject, although caution is taken to studying this new branch of humanity as a small minority of psykers began to see themselves as superior to their fellow 'normal' counterparts. Funnily enough, because of these small minority, development in anti-psyker technologies increased in pace as a 'just in case' measure.

**M30**

Unknown to humanity in the fringes of the galaxy, the Eldar empire had fallen and the few Eldar numbering in the millions took to the stars to escape the ruin that their empire was becoming due to the warnings of their Farseers. Hundreds of craftworlds and various other ships flee into space away from their empire, seeking safety among the vast stars of the galaxy.

The birth of Slaanesh, the Chaos God of Pleasure results in the end of the Warp storms that had plagued the galaxy for the past 5,000 years and had been the cause of the interstellar blackout and cutoff of Warp travel.

This birth resulted in a psionic scream throughout the universe that shattered the boundaries between realspace and the Warp, creating a hole in the galaxy called the Eye of Terror. Trillions of Eldar are killed as the newly born Chaos God feasts upon the souls of the Eldar that were unfortunately caught in its birth scream.

The birth of this entity resulted in some Warp-tuned beings becoming hosts of daemonic entities of the Warp that used them as a portal into realspace to release all kinds of Warp entities.

The Federation remnant was not spared from this like any other race and found itself having to fight against beings that could be considered biblical in nature. Having already lost their previous civilisation, this Federation wasn't willing to let this one fall so easily.

In the Federation, the century of fighting that took place in Federation space as they retook their worlds was given the Crusade, after the old religious wars of Earth. During this time, psykers who hadn't been possessed by malevolent entities because of one thing or another, showed their value to humanity as they helped soldiers defeat the scores of enemies that threatened them using their abilities.

After finally destroying every single one of the formerly human portals and removing every other non-human entity, a decision had to be made about psykers.

Geneticists had discovered the gene that gave psykers their abilities, and thus, the Federation could essentially remove it from humans and future humans thus safeguarding them from future occasions such as this or they could allow psykers to continue existing, the value they shown during the reconquest of their new worlds being shown being used as argument against their clear disadvantage of being potential portals to the realspace by malevolent entities of the Warp.

Debates raged on about this, and these debates threatened to split the diminished population of the Federation remnant into two and possible civil war, both sides decided to meet each other halfway, Psykers would be allowed to continue to exist, but only in a small finite number at a single time, with newly identified psykers having the gene removed whilst still in the womb. And they would also have to go through extensive training in their abilities and a kill-switch would be placed into their brains in case they were ever possessed. Brutal, but it was accepted as necessary after seeing the horrors possessed psykers brought forth.

**M38**

In Federation space, a patrol group found themselves surprised when they came across a damaged Eldar ship that had been caught in a battle and was undergoing serious repairs. They became even more surprised when it turned their weapons on them, thinking they were hostile.

Quick thinking on the captain of the group, managed to stop any impending conflict between the two races. Not knowing how to proceed, the captain alerted his superiors whilst also at the same time offered his squadrons assistance in helping them repair their ship.

The Eldar aptly refused on that offer of assistance.

Receiving orders from his superiors to just let the Eldar be, the captain turned his squadron around on course to leave the Eldar alone.

A week later, another patrol squadron came across the Eldar ship, still damaged in the same area and suffering from extensive power losses that was threatening the entire populace of Eldar on the ship that numbered in the millions.

Once again, assistance was offered and the captain had expected another refusal on the matter but was surprised when the offer was accepted by the captain, albeit reluctantly on his part.

Soon enough, rescue ships came into the area and took the Eldar populace aboard and then proceeded to tow their ship towards one of their lesser inhabited systems as a just in case if the Eldar tried something. They might have acted superior to humans with their arrogant nature, but one could never be to careful.

Landing on a small uncolonized planet, the Federation left them materials and supplies they thought would help with their ships repairs and also survive and then left the Eldar to their own musings, albeit keeping a watchful eye on the planet.

Surprisingly, the Eldar stayed on the planet for days on end. Eventually those days turned into weeks, into months and then into years. Wondering what was going on, a convoy was sent. It turned out the Eldars they had saved were Exodites that had the same idea as the Federation to head towards distant stars to escape their races' collapse.

The Exodites had already created a settlement on the planet and by the looks of things, they were there to stay.

Not wanting to start a meaningless fight over a planet they hadn't even colonised yet, even if it was located in one of their systems, the Federation allowed them to stay inside. Eventually, the years went by and the nearby human colony of Nepal began trading with them.

At first it was slow and intermittent, but eventually the trade began to increase in size and volume with the Eldars goods and occasional technology helping in the colonies increase in growth and development.

Eventually, the two colonies began to interact more and more, eventually it wasn't long before the first recorded birth of a half-human, half-eldar being. This birth caused a round of talking amongst Federation subjects as to whose nationality the child belonged to, humanity or the Eldar. Although that was superseded by the fact that many were astounded that such a birth could exist between two different races, no matter how 'human' the other looked.

The choice was made for them when the mother of the child, a rather young Eldar freely decided to live with her child and husband on the nearby Nepal. Cited reasons for leaving her fellow Eldar were persecution by the other older Eldar who took it as a sign of their weakening blood. Although it was considered that the younger generation were warming up to humanity and such didn't have such a problem with such a union.

Over time, much to the older Eldars' chagrin, more half Eldar-Human births were recorded. Consequently this new breed of humanity was dubbed _homo elf_ after the mythical creatures of Old Earth the Eldar bared resemblance too.

**Mid M39**

The Federation remnant was no more. This wasn't because of destruction through war or system wide collapse, no, the Exodites of the world that would go on to be known as Aimsir, had grown to become wholly accepted in Federation space, such as the humans themselves became increasingly accepted on Aimsir. One of the main driving force of this acceptance being humanity's previous rescue of the stranded Eldar ship when they could have easily left them for dead or destroyed their ship as it was all but defenceless at the time.

With the increase in interaction with the Eldar, Aimsir was accepted as a Federal world with some special rights to it and a seat on the senate. Although the first thing the representative of the planet had pointed out that the name of this combined civilisation was called the Federation of _Man_kind.

Eldar were clearly not mankind, and something had to be done about that.

So eventually, the Federation was soon replaced by the newer entity known as the Systems Alliance is born.

With this union, came the advantages the Eldar brought to humanity in the form that they were made aware of the True Enemy and the full potential of the Warp. This revelation made many a humans in the Alliance thank whatever deity that had been watching over them for changing their preferred mode of travel to subspace rather than the Warp itself.

And along with those revelations, came the help of the older Eldar in the training of human and halfling psykers to a far better and more potent degree than they could.

Years passed as the Subspace continued to slowly expanded through their region of space, all the while preparing themselves for the day they would soon be able to carry out the defunct Federations' original goal of bringing humanity under one rule and maybe, with the help of their Eldar allies, bring the many Craftworlds and Exodites of the galaxy together under one rule.

It was only a matter of time before the Alliance eventually made contact and with each other, with that the wider galaxy that only knew war.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I don't own Warhammer, but the other stuff is mine.**

* * *

><p>(Star System 3-45D, Eastern Fringes, 134.M41)<p>

Scout Probe 212 was an Alliance built reconnaissance probe that was attached to the mostly AI controlled 105th Drone Scout Flotilla that had just been recently deployed into deep space to scout out the surrounding systems on the borders of Union space. It's assigned mission was relatively simple. It had been tasked with mapping out the star system of 3-45D.

This included various things such as scanning the planets or astral bodies in the system for any signs of resources the Alliance could use or a habitable planet fit for colonisation.

If it had a fully functioning AI instead of the limited logic functions that governed its actions, it would have started feeling rather bored with its current task. The system didn't really have anything to note of.

From the moment it had entered the system, it had spread its sensors far and wide and counted a yellow dwarf star, three planets and a combined total of four moons. three of those moons orbited two gas giants that were mostly comprised of helium and nitrogen. Two resources that could be put by the Alliance.

Right now, it was on its way towards the only world in this system that its sensors had classified as habitable. As standard with all other habitable labeled worlds, its logic engines made it so that it would gather further data on how habitable that planet was. Things such as atmosphere, scans of the planets tectonics among various other things.

But before it could reach the planet, its sensors managed to pick up on something that was orbiting the planet. Several somethings actually, and they all had heat signatures.

In less than a second, its parameters immediately gave it the instructions to activate its cloaking features, which it happily followed. Then came the next part to get more data on these objects in orbit. They could have been ships or space stations and by having more data on the subject, its creators would be able to make the correct decisions.

Nearing the heat objects, but making sure it stayed a safe distance away, 212 immediately noted the objects were ships, rather crude ships actually. And with several ornaments and the colours they were flying, along with a query of its database, it came to the conclusion that the ships were Orkoid in built.

HIGHCOM would have to be alerted of this. All Orkoid planets were to be registered and soon have an extermination force sent to remove the lifeforms before they decide to depart from the planet on a WAAAGH!

With its advanced FTL communications, what it had gathered had already been transmitted back to the flotilla, and from there, back to HIGHCOM. It had already received instructions from its handlers.

It was to continue to observe the planet and gather any more data. With these orders, 212 made its way closer to the apparent fleet of the lifeforms.

A mystery to many races as to how such a crude life form could actually build things such as voidships, there was always one thing you could count on Ork technology. That it was crude compared to everything else.

And such, its sensor suites, if any of those ships had any, wouldn't be able to detect such a highly developed cloak that 212 emitted. Thus it got closer to the planet to get a better understanding of the situation on the ground and get the numbers of the Orks planetside.

What it found, if it was fully sentient, would have surprised it and it would have been sure that its creators and AI handlers would be rather surprised too.

XxX

(Athena, Capital World of Greco Sub-sector, Europa Sector, 134.M41)

"You suck." Well, what a pleasant way of telling someone how you feel about them, but damn, this situation was completely and utterly truthful in how he felt about his compatriot right now. Sam sighed as he leaned against a wall, looking across him at his best friend, "Seriously, you suck."

Sam was a fairly tall individual standing north of six foot by a good couple of inches. He had short, messy blackish-brown hair that sat atop his head, fair toned skin that didn't seem to have a single blemish on it and violet coloured eyes. He was currently dressed in a simple attire of casual clothing.

Sitting opposite him being attended to by a nurse, Henri cast a half hearted glare at him, "Shut up. Some of us like to enjoy ourselves when we go on a night-out."

Henri was just a fair smaller than Sam by an inch or two, olive skinned and had a lighter shade of brown hair than Sam himself and his eyes were that of a steely blue kind. Like his compatriot, he was also dressed in casual clothing.

Sam smirked in wry amusement, "That's just your way of saying you're a lightweight." Henri went and just rose his hand to give him the bird. That just caused Sam's smirk to widen even further across his face.

"I'm not a lightweight." Henri mumbled underneath his breath before seeing the nurse move away from him, "Done?" He asked as he moved his hand so that his fist was held level in front of him.

The nurse nodded, "It's done. But try not to put too much pressure on it," The nurse warned him as she put away her gear into a pack, "The gel is still closing the cuts on your hand. So that means no punching people or glasses." She finished off with something of a glare.

Henri just grinned as he got up, "Can't promise anything." He said as he continued to flex his hand. Hooray for medi-gel, he couldn't even feel the pain the cuts caused him, neither did the gel sting his wounds in the slightest, "But I'm sure my buddy over there would be more than willing to look out for me." He finished off as he thumbed in the direction of Jonah.

Sam waved him off, "I'm not looking out for you. Do I look like your mother?"

Henri shrugged his shoulders uncaringly as they made for the front desk, "Well, you nag me enough so might as well be my mother." He quipped.

"That's because most of the time, you're a dumbass."

The two males continued making chatter among themselves as they made for the front desk. It didn't take them long to get to their intended location in the clinic they were currently at. It took a further few minutes for Henri to write off any documents that he needed to be probably discharged and confirmation that his injuries had been treated.

Henri let out a sudden exhale of breath as the sudden chill of the night hit him as they stepped out of the clinic, "So what now?" He asked as he rubbed his hands together, taking in the sights as anti-grav vehicles sped by high above and on the ground itself, "Want to continue out on the night?" He propositioned.

Sam cast a look in his direction, "I think you had enough to drink tonight." He noticed the time from a holographic clock, "And it's getting rather late."

His companion didn't think so, "Please, its only a bit after one in the morning." He said with a scoff, "It's still early." He continued, "You're not taking this away from me. This is our only week we have left to do whatever we want before we have our very first deployment. It could be years before we make planetfall again." He tried to reason to get Sam to change his mind.

Sam turned his look away from Henri to dig into his pockets, "We have shore leaves on our deployments." He matter of factly pointed out, "We'll be making planetfall a lot of times. So there goes that reason."

Henri had to admit that Sam had a point. It was a bit asinine to think that on their deployment, they wouldn't be making any sort of planetfall. It wasn't exactly healthy to have thousands of people just coped up on a flying box in space without giving them space to stretch their legs on the ground.

But still, there was still a point to be made here, "This is our last chance to actually drink something alcoholic and not have someone on our case for drinking on duty!" Henri continued with his argument to continue with enjoying the night.

Sam just cast another look in Henri's direction, "We are _allowed_ to drink on the ship. There's a bar and everything. Just not when we're on duty." And considering that they were marines, that meant they had a lot of free time on their hands on the ship.

"..." Henri stayed quiet for a few moments, "That's different." He finally said after a while.

Sam was about to retort before a beeping noise turned his attention towards his comm-device. He fished it out of his pocket and noticed the name on the incoming caller. He clicked the accept icon, "Aran." He said in greeting.

The sounds of music could be heard from the background of the call, "_Sam!_" A male voice greeted rather happily from the other side, "_Where did you and Henri go? You're missing out here!"_

Once more, Sam's violet eyes fell on Henri who had suddenly found the twin moons of Athena rather interesting all of a sudden, "Henri got into a bust-up with some other guys. had to go to a clinic to get his hands checked out."

"_Did he win?"_

Henri decided to jump in at that point, "Damn right!" He said, seemingly rather proud of that fact, "Even drunk out of my mind, I can still kick ass!"

Silence came from the other side of the line. Well, silence from the person speaking, the sound of music could still be heard though, "_You don't sound very drunk._" Aran pointed out after a while.

Sam took the device and placed it on loudspeaker, "He was given some pills to get the alcohol out of his system."

"_Such a lightweight."_

He couldn't help but smirk in amusement at that, "That's what I said."

Henri scoffed as he looked away, "I'm _not_ a lightweight."

"_We had only hit like three bars before you were out of your mind."_ Aran helpfully pointed out, "_So years, you're a lightweight my friend."_

"_Not_ a lightweight." Henri grumbled in retort to the accusations on his ability to hold his own when it came to the alcoholic beverage.

Sam went to input his own theory into this before his retina implant came alive and deployed an immediate alert. He blinked when he saw the message, "We're being deployed?" He let out in surprise as he saw the urgent notification that had been broadcasted to all required personnel to report to their base urgently.

Henri nodded his head, but instead of surprise, he was feeling another feeling altogether, "Our week still isn't over yet!" He protested, "It's too early for this!"

"_I don't think they would care."_ Aran said from the other side of the line, still on his device. Himself having received the notification, "_So we meet up at base?"_

Sam nodded, even though Aran wouldn't be able to see his nod unless it was a holographic projection of him, "Yeah, see ya at the base." He said as he ended the call and placed the device back into his pocket. Him and Henri began making their way towards the taxi stands, "I wonder what's the cause of this random summons?" He wondered aloud.

"Pirates?" Henri suggested as they continued walking at a quick pace.

"This deep into Alliance territory?" Sam asked rhetorically before shaking his head, "Pirates aren't that stupid. Especially with the fact that there's two big-ass military bases in this sub-sector alone."

Henri let out a huff as he put his hands into his pockets, "Then I guess we'll find out as soon as we get back to base then."

"Then we better pick-up the pace." Sam suggested, "I'm rather curious about all of this." Although he had to admit, if this was a genuine summons instead of just a drill, it probably meant he was going to be seeing combat for the first time. He shook his head in amusement, "Not even a month after basic training has finished and I'm already hopping off to God knows where." He muttered underneath his breath.

Henri turned his head slightly in Jonah's direction, "Hm, did you say something?" He asked.

Sam shook his head, "No, just me talking to myself."

XxX

(Orbit above Athena - _Endeavour_)

Captain Yurick Estervaal made his way towards the bridge of the SSV _Endeavour_ with a datapad in one hand, reviewing everything he had been told during his meeting with higher command. As he neared the bridge, the two Marine guards standing guard outside saluted him.

Yurick returned the salute with his free hand, "At ease boys." He said as he walked past them, the door quietly sliding open at his approach. The two Marines doing what was asked of them as they returned back to their guard duty.

As he stepped into the command and control center of one of the battleships of the Alliance, the sounds of the various men and women who worked underneath him on the bridge could be heard as some went to and fro, others sitting at their stations pressing holographic keyboards. On various terminals were holographic projectors showing various amounts of information and data as the cackle of chatter hanged in the air.

He came to a halt and set his datapad onto the main holotable on the deck, "Captain on deck!" His Executive Officer announced to the rest of the bridge with a crisp salute, the other bridge officers standing up and doing the same.

Yurick nodded his head in acknowledgement, "At ease ladies and gents." He said as he returned the salute. And like that, the bridge went back to its usual mess of ordered chaos as it was.

His Executive Officer, Commander Eoin Kellith, a strikingly tall woman with fair blonde hair and perfect features with deep blue eyes. The most pronounced of her features being the ends of her ears that stuck out the side of her hair, indicating her mixed-race heritage.

"Captain." She greeted with a nod of the head, her voice sounding almost angelic to the ears if it wasn't for the steel in it.

"Eoin," Yurick greeted as he placed the datapad onto the main holotable's side, "What's our status?"

"All systems are green sir," She reported as she showed her report on the holotable, with a list appearing showing all of the _Endeavour_'s systems being green, "We're just waiting for all of the personnel that were planetside to return sir."

Yurick nodded his head, taking this moment to look away from the holotable and through the forward viewing port into the inky blackness of space that was being illuminated by the planet below. Even now, he could see several military ships in orbit on the planet, holding in formation with all kinds of smaller ships coming up from the planet itself to dock into them.

"How many people are we waiting for?" He asked.

At that moment, a small holographic male body dressed in a suit from the 3rd millenium appeared on the holotable. The body was light blue in colour with lines of code running through its assorted body and clothing. This was the ships onboard AI, Bond.

"Not long at all sir," The AI replied, his voice replicating one of the many accents from the home of humanity, a region called England in the history books, "The last wave of ships will be carrying the last of the personnel for the _Endeavour_."

Yurick nodded, "Thanks Bond."

Eoin looked at her superior, "If you don't mind me asking sir," She began, "But what is this all about?" She was rather curious. She had been preparing for her own shore leave before having to cancel her own plans at summoning she received through her implant.

Yurick could only smile in wry amusement, "You'll find out soon enough Eoin. You can count on that."

XxX

Sam sat in the back of one of the transport ships as it made its way towards the ship he was assigned too. In the back of the transport was the rest of his platoon, all fifty of them. Some of them were stood up talking to each, as they had passed the atmosphere and didn't need to be seated.

All around him, he could hear the chatter of his fellow marines, the very same marines that he had come to know over the past two years whilst living with them, training with them and fighting alongside them in simulations. Some of the points of discussion were based around their curiosity into the sudden summonings. He couldn't blame them, he was rather curious too.

A slightly taller figure than Sam with silky black hair and the same eye colour as him slumped into the seat next to him, drinking a liquid from out of a carton. He stopped and grimaced as he looked at the carton, "Why do I have to drink this crap?" He asked anyone who was willing to answer, "It tastes like crap."

"Because you turned up at base drunk as hell Aran."

Aran took another sip of the liquid before stopping and mock gagged, "Because I was expecting to sleep in tomorrow in some lovely ladies apartment-slash-home." He explained himself, "I certainly wasn't expecting to be suddenly called up for whatever…" He stopped as he tried to think of something, "...Whatever the higher-ups want us to do. This better not be some drill." He finished off with a slight narrow of the eyes.

Sam glanced in the direction of Aran, "You could always check the future and see if this is a drill."

Aran gave a look in Sam's direction, "I'm not a Seer. I'm a warrior." He clarified, tinges of pride in his voice, "If I wanted to use some magic voodoo and all that pizzazz, I'd have gone and trained to be a Seer at Irindel."

"Whatever. Just drink your drink would you? It would be embarrassing to turn up on the ship with the only drunkard in our platoon."

Aran did what was asked of him, but that didn't stop him from complaining, "Tastes like crap though…"

Sam raised an eyebrow in amusement, "And how would you know what crap tastes like?" He quipped in amusement, "Aran, is there something you want to tell us? It's okay, you can tell us. I promise, we won't laugh." He said, the other Marines in hearing range laughing lightly to themselves.

Aran let out a humourless laugh as he elbowed Sam in the arm, "Shut up."

The two continued talking amongst themselves before their attention was grabbed by the speakers, "_Ladies and gentlemen,"_ The pilot began, "_If you would look outside the window to your left, or better yet, the holoscreen, you will see the _Endeavour, _your next home for the next few years._" He announced to the Marines, and as he said, a large holoscreen came up to show the _Endeavour_.

For some wanting to see the real thing with their own eyes, they went towards the viewing ports on the left side of the transport, whilst others looked at the screen. Sam and Aran were some of those that looked outside of the viewing port.

Aran let out a whistle, "That is pretty...big." And Sam couldn't help but agree with that statement.

He couldn't tell how big it was, but the _Endeavour_ was certainly bigger than any civilian ship he had ever seen or had the pleasure to ride upon. It looked to be kilometres long in length and width in the shape similar to a smooth, but somewhat blocky rectangle. Although it was difficult to see, he could notice various laser turrets, autocannons, missile and torpedo silos and located seemingly along the entire spine of the ship, several rather ominous looking cannons.

"How many people do you think are aboard on that thing?" One of the marines asked.

"I'm guessing," Another began, "A lot."

"Thanks. I wouldn't have figured that out myself."

"_Alright boys and girls, viewing times over. Time to get back in your seats."_ The pilot spoke, "_We'll be landing soon."_

It took a while, but eventually the marines did as they were asked and sat in their seats. That didn't stop them from admiring the ship as its image was still plastered onto the screen in front of them.

It didn't take long for the transport to make its way past the atmospheric shields of the hangar and make its landing inside its designated hangar. By then, most of the marines had already gotten out of their seats, Sam being one of them. The sound of magnetic locks being released alerted the marines to the door where their platoon sergeant, a rather tough looking man with dark skin and brown eyes, by the name of Ajo Nilus stood at the exit.

The door to the carrier bay dropped open before settling on the metal flooring of the hangar in a dull thud. Nilus stood at the mouth of the exit, he seemingly took a moment to take in his surroundings before stepping forward onto the rampart, "7th Platoon," He called out to get their attention, "Form on me!" He ordered as he jogged a short ways away before coming to a halt.

The marines immediately followed after him and did what was asked. They formed on him in a formation of five columns with ten marines in each row. The entire lines were straight, there was no curve or bend. This had been drilled into them the moment they started their training.

Sam was situated at the front of the formation along with Aran standing beside him. He took this chance to take a look around him, and he was honestly and utterly impressed. This was his first time in a ship this vast in size.

For as far as he could see, there were hundreds, probably thousands of crewmen and women going around the hangar, checking on the ships or moving equipment to and fro. In front of him, there was a wide lane lit up by luminescent lights. He wondered why before his question was answered when several vehicles sped past, some going in one direction, the other going in the other.

The fact that the just one of the hangars of the ship needed vehicle lanes to ferry men and equipment spoke testament of just how vast the ship was. From what he could see, all the landing areas where packed with Vulture drop ships, and standing in front of them were marines standing at attention, some already had their officers present.

This made him wonder how long they'll have to wait for their own CO to make their appearance.

"You must be 7th Platoon."

Heads snapped to the side. Sam's eyes stopped to rest at the holographic image of Bond, "Yes."

"Alright. My name is Bond, I'm the ships' AI. It will be a pleasure working with you." The AI said with a nod of the head, "Someone will be around to show you around. Just hang tight." He told them before saluting them and then disappearing.

Aran who was standing next to him, leaned in, "So how long do we have to hang tight?"

Sam shrugged, "For however long it takes us." He said in response to the question, "It's not like this will be the first time we have to deal with just standing in formation until someone turns up. Look at the bright side, it's not raining, snowing, hailing or any other kind of bad weather."

Aran chuckled quietly to himself, "Oorah."

With that done, Sam just continued to look around to take in the sights. He heard the sounds of machinery moving and looked up and nearly let out a whistle. Hanging seemingly at the highest level of the hangar seemed to be frigates.

Now Sam wasn't Navy or could boast that he knew his ships, but he definitely knew what a frigate looked like, and what he was seeing were definitely frigates. Apparently, this ship was big enough to dock what looked like over a dozen frigates.

He smirked lightly to himself as he thought about the implications of this. Anyone fighting against them would think they were fighting against a single ship, but instead, with the frigates released, they would be in for a surprise, 'A very nasty surprise.' he mused.

Aran then proceeded to nudge him in the arm to get his attention. He turned slightly to look at him. The taller male indicated with his head in a direction and at that prompting, Sam followed his line of sight.

Coming their way was a fairly young looking woman who was making her way towards them. She had dirty blonde hair that was done up into a short ponytail and clear green eyes that he could see from this distance, and lightly tanned skin. She was dressed in Marine dark blue fatigues like the rest of them with two silver bars on her sleeves, indicating she was a 1st Lieutenant.

'Probably our platoon commander.' Sam mused.

His hypothesis was made correct as she came to a halt in front of them. The moment she stopped in front of them, the entire platoon saluted her.

"As you were." She said, her eyes looking over the group of soldiers in front of her.

Nilus stepped up, "Delta Platoon reporting in ma'am."

Her green eyes settled on Nilus before going back to the rest of the platoon, "I'm 1st Lt. Jenna Van." She introduced herself, "I'll be your commanding officer for the foreseeable future. Let's work well together marines."

XxX

(Athena Orbit - Aboard the SSV _Apollo)_

"Sir, all ships are reporting green." Caesar, the onboard AI of the _Apollo _reported.

Admiral Cole nodded his head as he looked over the large holotable that sat in the command deck of the _Apollo_. One half was dedicated to showing the ships that were under his command for this venture, whilst the other was showing the target and objective of this grand venture.

The planet that a surveillance probe had found that was currently suffering from a severe Ork infestation. On another day, this wouldn't be a problem. The planet suffering from the infestation wasn't an Alliance planet or one that was going to be colonised anytime soon.

So why was it having an entire battle group send its way? It was simple really, because the planet had a human population. A _human_ population, that was being attacked by the orks.

Now that had come as a surprise. He was rather surprised human colonisation efforts had spread out so far across the galaxy. It was currently unknown if this colony was under the jurisdiction of some human interstellar civilisation, but if it was, they were doing a pretty horrible job of protecting their assets.

And it didn't matter if it belonged to another civilisation or not, sooner or later, the Alliance was going to spread out and reclaim the other human colonies in the galaxy. Just as it was stated in its constitution. For the past fifteen thousand years, the Federation and its successor had been building up to that eventual reclamation and bringing humanity back under one rule.

"Put me on line to every ship." Cole ordered, "It's about time that they heard the reason why their shore leave was cut short." And he doubted that any of them would have a problem with this in the slightest.

Caesar smirked, "I figured you'd say that. So I went ahead and already connected to the ships." He stepped aside with a flourish, "The floor is all yours."

Cole resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the flamboyant attitude of the AI. He had come to learn quickly that every AI in the Alliance had some sort of personality quirk one way or another. But that didn't make them any less effective.

He took a step forward and then proceeded to lightly clear his throat, "This is Admiral Cole…"

XxX

(Aboard the _Endeavour_)

"This is Admiral Cole," A sudden announcement came along every screen in the hangar. This sudden action managed to get everyone's attention as they stopped whatever they were doing to look up at the screens in question, "I'm sure many of you are wondering about the sudden departure without any prior warnings."

That was sort of an understatement of the century. Everyone was definitely wondering.

"Just a few days ago, one of our probes deployed into deep space for expansion survey entered a system and began to go around and do its usual routine of cataloguing the planets." Cole continued to speak, "There was nothing special about the systems two other planets, until it came across the last planet closest to its star. This planet was special because its sensors detected radio signals coming from the planets surface."

Radio signals? That was interesting since it indicated life on that planet. It wouldn't be the first planet that the alliance came across that held intelligent life. But it didn't fully explain everything though. There was something more to this. The Alliance left such planet which held intelligent life well alone.

Those systems were mostly restricted unless for researchers to observe the progress of other races without interfering in their own development. They weren't a charity or had a complex of uplifting less developed races into space-faring ones. That sort of policy could backfire and could result in rivals when it came to worlds to colonise.

So there was something special about this planet that needed to have an entire battlegroup on it. Maybe such as an ork infested world that had been brought together under one warlord, who planned to take his underling orks on their usual, destructive migration across the galaxy. Such things needed to be stopped before they happened. Full on Ork Waaaghs! were difficult to stop once they got going.

Cole continued speaking, "You must be wondering if this entire commotion is about a few radio signals. Well, it is. Because those radio signals were human in origin." That brought a look of surprise on many a faces, even on faces in Cole's own bridge, "This planet, this dusty planet near the edge of Alliance space was colonised by humans. I don't want to get into the hows or whys, but I can tell you that this planet is now currently suffering from a full-blown Ork invasion and the defenders have already been pushed back to just one remaining city."

He paused for breath, "I don't know about you, but I don't think I have it in me to leave a group of our fellow man to the machinations of the orks. I think that's a reason plenty enough to cut shore leave short. Now let's go hunt us some orks." And with that, the feed was cut.

It took a bit for people to process what they had just heard before they immediately went to work with renewed zeal. Orks weren't the friendliest of xenos' in the galaxy. If they didn't outright kill every inhabitant of a planet, the survivors would be left to work as slaves to build and manufacture their crude weapons of war.

That wasn't something they were going to let happen, not under their watch.

XxX

(Command Deck)

Yurick cast an amused glance in Eoin's direction, "Told you, you would know sooner or later." He just didn't think the entire battlegroup would be made aware at the same time. Oh well, it wasn't his place to make such decisions.

Eoin shook herself out of her stupor, "Humans? This far out?" She knew her history, the Federation during its golden age hadn't even spread this far out with their interstellar civilisation. This probably meant a new civilisation or a smaller one, or just the result of a colony ship that settled on the planet during the long years that humanity had settled in the galactic edge.

"Seems like it." Yurick said with mirth in his voice, "And now our fellow man is in need of some ork extermination. And we're more than willing to help with that." He looked up from the holotable towards the navigation suite, "Prep for slipspace jump. I want us ready to go the moment the Admiral gives us the green light."

"Sir!"

XxX

(Aboard the _Apollo_)

"All systems are green and all ships are reporting green sir." Caesar reported, "They're waiting on your mark."

Cole nodded his head, "Go." He said simply, and with a soft lurch, he could feel the _Apollo_'s engine begin to propel the ship forward. From the view deck, he could see the seven other ships in the battlegroup doing the very same, "slipspace?"

"Engines primed and ready sir."

The Admiral nodded, "Jump."

In front of Cole, through the forward viewing deck, a hole seemingly in the fabric of space itself opened up to reveal nothing. With a lurch that could barely be felt through the soles of his feet, the ship lurched forward into the dark portal. The _Apollo_ wasn't the only ship doing such a thing as like the other eight ships in the battlegroup, they had all opened portals in front of them and where plowing there way through them.

XxX

(Sometime Later - Manary, Imperial Agri-world, Charon Cluster, Ultima Segmentum)

"Ere we go, ere we go, **ERE WE GO!**"

That had been the same chant over and over and over again. They just wouldn't let up. Throughout the night, they would just continue chanting that same chant over and over again. It was honestly maddening.

The volume of the chant didn't at all help with some of the defenders that wanted to take a quick nap. It always occurred every single time they drove them back, forcing them to regroup and wait for another chance to attack.

It would have been prudent to use this small respite to rest weary eyes and tired bodies, but the constant chanting just wouldn't allow them. At the rate they were going, some men might just start falling dead from exhaustion.

Rana sighed as she slumped into the railing of the wall that surrounded the last remaining unconquered city on Manary, clutching the lasgun in her arms, hugging it for warmth. Even though the arid climate of the planet made it so that there was no such thing as a cold night. It was always warm one way or another.

She looked around and noted the other PDF soldiers and volunteers taking this moment to get whatever rest they could, some being vigilant to continue the lookout just in case a surprise attack was orchestrated by the orks.

She had only arrived on the planet just a month ago, and during that time, she had certainly not expected a full-blown Ork Waaagh! to suddenly turn up on this backwater planets' door step. All she had come here to do was as part of an escort to a trader. The entire thing shouldn't have taken a week at most and then she would be off again.

But that entire idea had been blown out of the sky the moment the orks had arrived. They had blown the small fleet that she was with to kingdom come, they didn't even stand a chance. She had been one of the few lucky ones of the entire group to have been planetside when the green wave hit.

And then from that, it had been a fight for survival, nothing more, nothing less. The sheer surprise of the attack had completely caught the PDF garrison by surprise. And soon, cities started to fall, until the capital only remained.

Reason being that out of all the PDF regiments, the capital had the largest one attached to it, and also had the most defences. The governor had been rather paranoid about people usurping his position of power.

The paranoia had come in handy. Real handy, it had allowed the PDF to hold out for far longer than it had the right too. The only reason why people weren't making for the hills was because there was nowhere to run. All the ships had been destroyed, although some nobles had private shuttles, they had been quickly shot out of the sky by ork fighters, and even if they were lucky enough to get into space, they had the ork freebootaz waiting for them.

'Doesn't matter though, we'll probably be dead by tomorrow's end.' She thought rather grimly. Munitions were running low, so was food and fighting fit men, PDF and volunteers. Everything was going south really badly. The PDF had probably sent out an astropathic distress signal, but she doubted they would come.

Manary was a backwater planet, even the loss of its production of foodstuffs wouldn't even be registered among the entirety of the Imperium. It was rather limited in what it could and couldn't grow and so relied on grazing animals, but that again, was limited.

Hell, the signal itself could have been lost or garbled up in some way by a warp storm taking place somewhere in the sector. Whoever received it wouldn't know what to do with it.

And who was to say this wasn't part of a wider Waaagh! that was attacking more important worlds?

She took out her pistol and looked at it, she was going to fight until the end, no doubt about that. But she was going to save the last pack for herself. If it seemed hopeless, she was going to end herself.

She hadn't been the first, and she was damn sure that she wasn't going to be the last, 'Emperor help us.'

XxX

"Admiral," Navigations Officer Riley called out, "We'll be exiting slipspace in five minutes sir."

Cole nodded his head, "Notify all ground personnels to be ready for immediate combat drops. I want all ships to have weapons and shields online and active." He barked out his orders in quick succession.

"Aye aye sir."

At the confirmation of his orders being relayed towards the other ships, he turned his attention towards the hototable that showed the planet. The latest intelligence from the probe indicated that the orks had a small fleet of ships of twenty three holding in orbit. His own battlegroup had seven ships five battleships that included the _Apollo _and two carriers that carried the bulk of their ground troops...not counting the several squadron worth of frigates docked inside the ships themselves.

He didn't plan on using them since the he planned on catching the vessels by surprise and obliterating the majority of them with an initial salvo of torpedoes and missiles and then proceeded to punch a hole through the blockade to give a passage to the troop transport to beginning put troops on the ground.

That was the plan, but rarely anything ever went according to plan and thus he had several other plans as back-up.

XxX

(Aboard the _Endeavour__ -_ Armoury)

"Come on, move it Marines!" A random sergeant yelled to the masses of bodies that were making their way through the vast area given to the Marine contingent.

Aran and Sam made their way towards to each of their own individual gyroscopic booths, only two out of hundreds of more that were busy arming the various Marines. They were both dressed in a black and blue metal-alloy under-suit.

Sam walked up to the gyroscopic booth, in the middle of the booth on the floor were a pair of soles to his power-armour. He stepped into them, noting they fit rather smugly and felt his armoured boots form up around his feet and ankles, his hair standing on end slightly at the slight shock he got from the magnetic lock.

He then placed his hands on two handles beside him, in an outstretched position, were at the moment he had gripped on the handles, servo-arms immediately attached his armoured gauntlet and bracers on his hands and forearms. The booth rotated to make him face the sky where he felt several plates of armour were placed onto his thighs and other strategic areas, which was finished off by two chest plates attached to the front and back that locked into place.

The booth rotated once more to an upright position and he walked off. With a mental command, his helmet folded up from the chest planets around his head before encasing it completely and then the reactive-plastic his visor was made off fell from its hidden depth before hardening. With that, his vision was filled with a HUD display.

He could see his suit going through a system start-up check to make sure everything was working correctly. At its prompting, he turned to look left, right, up and down before doing some more testing before it gave the all-clear.

He brought up his forearm were a display embedded into the bracer showed up, with a few tap on the holographic interface, his armour changed from its dark blue and black configuration to a more suitable one for the planet, desert.

"What are you taking out?" Aran asked on the commlink as he entered into an even stride with Sam.

"What I usually take out…" He had a role in his squad, why would he change his weapon load-out, even if he could? He was quite used to what he did on the battlefield.

The two continued to walk until they made their way towards a booth, "You need some variety in your life." Aran joked as the booth cycled through weapons and brought out his load-out. A dark-coloured sleek looking weapon, that was 45in end to end. Running through the middle for 30 or so inches was a small opening that ran through the rifle and underneath it, was its secondary fire mechanism, a Pulse Burst, in other words, a shotgun that fired directed energy, in this case, pure concussive kinetic force, enough to break bones and squash organs at close range and at the top was holographic scope.

Aran quickly placed the ammo rounds and several grenades onto the magnetic lock onto the small of his back. Setting his weapon to the side, he took out his secondary weapon, a small curved blade, that was around 27in in length and also placed that onto the magnetic lock on the small of his back before finishing off with his sidearm of a standard plasma pistol.

"Variety is overrated." Sam quipped in response as he checked out his own weapon, another sleek looking weapon, the MA9 Combat Assault Weapon. It was a plasma assault rifle that fired bolts of plasma. The rifle was the standard weapon for any Alliance ground soldier, reliable and had enough firepower to carry a trooper through anything the galaxy had to offer. It was fairly long, shorter than Aran's though at 39.5in with a holographic scope that can be activated at any time.

He lightly shoved Aran and motion with his head, "Come on, let's head to the rally point. I don't want Nilus or the new CO getting on our cases because we're late."

Aran nodded, "Alright, let's go." He said before both boys went towards their rally points, "The orks won't know what hit them."

"Not really, no."

* * *

><p>(Codex: Systems Alliance aka The Alliance)<p>

"_Numbers don't really mean anything when you think about it. Sometimes, its all about quality over quantity. And we have a shit load of that." _Corporal Jule Shannox, 103rd Marines.

Alliance Military: One of the most spectacular Armed forces within the Milky Way Galaxy and one of the greatest fighting forces to be ever mustered by humanity. The Alliance Military is split up into three divisions; The Army, Marines, and Navy.

The Armed services of the Alliance serve as the military arm of the Alliance government, created to deal with any and all threats that threaten Alliance security and its continued existence. And in their own humble opinion, they do it rather well.

In terms of size, the Army is the largest branch of the service numbering in the billions service personnel, followed closely by the Navy, then Marines. An Air Force used to exist before it was absorbed and split between the three other branches, with the vast majority of former Air Force personnel heading into the Navy to form the FleetArm subdivision.

All the soldiers within the Armed Services are rigorously trained to the point that the various organisations to the point that in theatres of combat, two or all services are able to work simultaneously well together. Entire planets and sometimes, systems have been dedicated to the military, these planets are the type that have a thin but bearable atmosphere, slightly heavier than normal gravity and adverse conditions for settlement. These planets are taken by the Armed Services so that they can be used to host entire wargames between divisions, battalions etc in the hope that these adverse conditions results in 'toughened' soldiers who are able to fight in any and all conditions and to also give them a 'real' life combat situation.

And along with those conditions they usually train in, all personnel receive a standard gene therapy package that increases the speed of cognitive thinking, reflexes, natural speed, endurance and strength.

To combat logistical nightmares from occurring due to the sheer size and vastness of the armed forces, all military arms adhere to a uniform military structure i.e. a certain number of ships in a fleet, number of soldiers in a regiment etc. This has made it far easier to supply regiments with needed equipment and supplies.

The few drawbacks that could be called to question would be the fact the entire organisations are volunteer based, and thus, compared to the other races, their fielded armies are smaller than most. But they make up for this with their training and highly advanced combat equipment and technology. It is also fair to note that Alliance personnel rarely break into a full route, if they're retreating from a battlefield, they would do so methodically, setting up traps and ambushes by the rearguard, to inflict even more losses.

Another problem is the lack of close-combat specialists in their ground forces, making them vulnerable to assault troops of other races. However they do make-up for this by increasing the training of its personnel in CQC and are slightly helped in this department by their own slightly bastardised version of the Howling Banshees of their Eldar allies. Although this band of warriors are low in number.

"_It's a lot like the Warp, just without the daemons, eddies and all that other stuff wanting to kill you in one way or form."_ Lt. Miriam Kerr, Navigations Officer, _Apollo_.

Slipspace: In its most basic rendering, slipspace travel is similar to Warp travel, but instead of entering one dimension to move at a faster than light speed, the ship opens a portal in this dimension of space itself and places itself into the space between dimensions. And not just the Immaterium, but other dimensions that exist but have no effect on the physical universe itself.

The idea of the Gellar field was taken from slipspace travel as it meant taking the properties of the normal 3D dimension i.e. matter, into the void which allowed for the change of physics for that piece of matter. Humanity used it during the beginning of its Age of Technology as it spread across the universe, but the speed at which ships travelled wasn't at all that fast until the discovery of Warp travel after scientists decided to investigate the other dimensions that existed.

With this discovery, slipspace slowly became obsolete, but research into it continued over time, which increased with the discovery of Warp storms that affected warp travel. Increases in technology and better understanding of the dimensions have allowed humanity to increase the speed of subspace to the point, in theory, it would take a little more than two months or so to travel from one side of the galaxy to the other.

Although compared to the Necrons, Alliance's understanding of dimensions and their uses of such a method of FTL is laughable as the Necrons are able to travel from one location to another in an instant.

To the eye of any race, slipspace seems pitch black as there is nothing in the visible spectrum to see.

"_If someone can actually shoot us out of the sky, I'd be more than willing to give them my entire life wages. I'd be dead, but I'd make it work somehow." _Flight Lieutenant Jorge Sam

Vulture Dropship: BAE Orbital Heavy Transport aka the Vulture, nicknamed after the carrion bird of Earth. The Vulture is a void-capable VTOL heavy transport, able to take to the ground a complement of platoons along with their equipment and any vehicles they require.

Due to the Vulture's necessity as a way to get a large amount of men and equipment down to the ground in quick succession without the need of suffering heavy losses, the Vulture is equipped with powerful energy shields that can take a pounding, and when those are breached, it has heavy armour composed of a nano-titanium alloy that can take some of the heaviest amount of damage before giving in.

And thanks to its primary role as a transport, it somewhat lacks in the weapons department. Designers sacrificing defence for offence, but it is installed with two pairs of automatic railguns located at the front and back of the ship, four heavy plasma cannons, two on the front and two at the back and on its spine, missile launchers.

It is also installed with an active stealth camouflage and capable of making small-range void jumps within a star system for stealth drops or insertions.

The vulture is 52.5 metres long, 40 metres wide and 13 metres high. It is propelled by four twin ramjets, two located at the front of the drop ship and the other two at the back. It is similar to the Orca of the Tau as it doesn't have 'wings' so to speak and is mainly used for transportation. It has two bays, the top bay is for troop transport along with their weapons and equipment and the bottom bay is for vehicles, such as tanks, light infantry vehicles or walkers.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I sort of changed the Union to the Alliance. I think it rolls of the tongue better, I shall edit my first chapter to show it. (Alliance sounds way better doesn't it?)<strong>

**Well, leave a review.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I don't own Warhammer. Wish I did, the money would be awesome.**

* * *

><p>The whistle of a rocket could be heard as it raced through the sky before coming into contact with its intended target and detonating in a fiery explosion. Problem was, the missile didn't belong to the Imperial garrison, not even in the slightest, instead, it was fired by an Ork with something that resembled a rocket launcher.<p>

Seeing its rokkit destroy an Imperial position, the Tankbusta let out a hearty laugh before quickly reloading its weapon to fire again. Whilst it was doing this, its fellow pyromaniacs fired their own rokkits from their rokkit launchas, bombarding the brave defenders with fiery explosions.

Pity there weren't at tanks around, it would have been much more fun blowing up tanks.

"Dammit!" A PDF colonel muttered as he watched another one of his positions bombed by the rokkits, "Someone takeout those tankbustaz!" He ordered to anyone who was willing to listen. Why weren't his sniper's taking out high priority targets like them? If these walls fell, then that would be it. They had already retreated as far back into the city as they could.

Even though throughout the whole arena, the sounds of lasguns being fired, explosions and heavy artillery could be heard in a deafening roar that hardly any sound could be heard over a long distance. The colonel winced just a little when he realised that the volume of the battlefield had quietened down by a few decibels.

...From their side, 'There goes another Hydra.' He took a hopeful look up to the sky and quickly came to regret it. There were far less flak explosions in the sky than there were before. Either the platform had been destroyed, or it had finally run out of ammunition.

Either way, neither of those two situations boarded well for the valiant defenders currently fighting for their lives. They had been able to hold out this long, despite the Orks utter aerial supremacy simply because they had the platforms to call upon to destroy as many Ork planes as possible.

"Colonel Castor!"

The colonel turned his soot and dirt covered face to face a runner, a terribly young one at that, nothing more than a child who seemed to be in his early teens, "What is it Garret?"

An explosion rang out near their position, causing the boy to jump slightly but easily managed to get his nerves back together in quick order, "Captain Beth and Habif are saying that they can't hold their position anymore. They're going to be overrun!"

Castor's eyes narrowed, "Tell them to keep holding their position, even if they have to start throwing bricks and rocks at those greenskins. Retreat is _not_ an option." Where would they retreat to? They had been pushed back as far as the Governor's Palace, and that was filled with refugees to the brim. That wasn't the place to conduct a battle, casualties would be enormous.

The boy quickly nodded his head, his dirt covered hair moving with each frantic and fearful shake, "Yes sir." The boy said quickly before turning and running out of the impromptu command center that Castor had created.

Castor watched him run off before turning back to look through the window of the shop he was currently in. This window being larger than it should have been courtesy of a stray rokkit that detonated just outside.

'I'm too old for this crap.' He lamented as he looked over the horizon where from his elevated position, he could see the greenskin horde in its entirety. There was probably thousands of them, and they just kept coming. They didn't care about the losses they were suffering, they just walked over the bodies of their dead, and among those piles of their dead, there was certainly a large number of Imperial defenders.

They had been holding for a month, much longer than he had actually expected the Manary PDF to hold on for. The entirety of the planet only had eleven such regiments to call upon, seven being light infantry regiments of a total of 6,000 men and women each along with three mechanized infantry regiments and an armoured regiment.

In total they had over 60,000 soldiers to protect a planet from opponents that, at best, had more than double their numbers and at worst, numbered in the millions it wouldn't even have mattered. Even with the additional numbers of volunteers fighting for their planet and home, it just didn't seem like anyone was going to live through this without somehow ending up dead, food for the greenskins or a slave.

A month later, those regiments had been drastically reduced to just four and a bit and each were under-powered.

When he had left and retired from the Guard, he certainly did not expect to ever lift up a rifle again, let alone somehow find himself conscripted and given an officer's commission for the local forces, 'We need a frakking miracle.' Castor cursed. From experience, he knew very well that Imperial reinforcements could be months away, or they might not even turn up at all. It wasn't that rare of an occurrence for a planet to be just written off in favour of far more pressing concerns.

"Sir!"

Castor turned his head to face a trooper, teary eyed and covered in dirt, grime and soot, "What is it trooper?"

He choked on his words as he spoke, clearly he was feeling the situation hopeless, "G-Garret's dead sir."

"What?"

"He was probably making his way to deliver a message, b-but a lucky artillery barrage landed right on him." Tears were now actively falling down the man's face, "I saw him get blown up. Emperor's Throne, he was just a kid. W-We're going to die, w-we're all going to die!"

If it was any other time, if a commissar had heard this, this trooper would have found himself with a laspistol to the head. Luckily for him, no such thing was going to happen to him right now. He needed every abled body to keep up the fight, even if it seemed seemingly hopeless.

"Get yourself together trooper, or I swear I'll shoot you myself!" Castor threatened, the commissar's at least had one thing right when it came to keeping a regiment in check, fear. Fear did a whole lot of things some time. He then noticed that the trooper was looking past him, not seemingly having registered his threat in the slightest, "What are you looking at trooper?" He asked, wondering if he had suffered from some sort of breakdown from the whole experience.

Not receiving an answer, he noticed that the few people in his command center had suddenly stopped what they were doing to look into the distance. He was going to shout at them to stop dazing around and get back to work before he noticed that it was strangely...quiet. Well, gunfire could still be heard, but the volume was vastly reduced compared to before.

He turned around to see just what was happening before noticing several streaks of something moving through the sky. He squinted his eyes, a thought going through his head, 'Just what the frakk is it now?'

XxX

(Several Moments Prior - Orbit above Manary - Kill Kroozer _Shipmaula_)

"Huh?" A random freebooter let out as it looked at a rather haphazard screen that had seen far better days. It smacked the console a few times before turning to look at another freebooter dressed in 'pirate-y' attire, "Kaptan, scanna says therez some ships comin ere."

The kaptin of the crew and the fleet of Ork ships in orbit turned to the greenskin, "Ships?" He repeated before slamming its clawed hand on its command seat, "Then whats the hold up for ya lazy gits? Turn the ship round and holla the otherz." It's mouth widened, "A fightz a comin. Lets show these humies we're da best and after that, take all the booty they ave!" It finished off before it broke into a loud laugh.

That laugh rang out as the fleet of Ork pirates turned their ships and prepared for combat, some already charging off to be first into the fray. The laugh died down when he saw the eight advancing ships and kaptin didn't know whether to be disappointed that there was only going to be eight ships against his armada.

But then again, those were some pretty big ships coming right at him, so that meant more scrap and booty for himself and his boys. He was already eyeing the biggest one out of the entire group to make it his future ship.

Ah, he could already see it now, the new _New Shipmaula_ of Kaptin Edkilla and his band of freebooterz. Everyone would fear his crew as they spread throughout the galaxy. No-one would be able to stop him.

XxX

(Command Deck - Aboard the _Apollo_)

Cole stood at the holographic tactical map as it showed a holographic image of the taskforce as they headed towards the besieged planet. They had just exited subspace a few minutes ago, and the ships were already in formation.

All the ships in the taskforce were set up in a jagged line formation as they made full speed towards the planet. With the ships capable of the most damage located in the center of the formation, so that their weapons can punch a hole through the Ork formation.

Caesar's holographic body flickered into being on the side of the table, "Ork ships sighted and are making their way towards us at full speed." With that said, the holotable added in the new ships that they were being picked up on the ships scanners. These new objects were marked red, obviously, "Scans show one battleship and seven cruiser class ships and the rest escort ships...some are interestingly designed.

Cole raised an eyebrow, "Interesting how?"

The holotable zoomed in on one particular greenskin ship, "Interesting as in shaped like a giant, space knife." Caesar remarked rather dryly, "I'm guessing they're primarily designed for boarding actions."

"Pity they aren't going to come even close." Cole looked over the advancing enemy fleet, "And here I was expecting them to come in some form of formation or have a battleplan at least." He idly commented as he saw how the advancing ships were just recklessly charging towards them.

"Greenskins aren't exactly known for their tactical acumen." Caesar quipped as additional enemy signatures, smaller than other signatures, much smaller, started showing up from some of the ships, "They're launching attack craft."

"Launch our own, I want them keeping in line with the formation." Cole promptly ordered, "And I want all ships to pick their targets and begin the initial bombardment."

The deck was busy with movement and orders as the bridge officers moved to follow orders, "Targets acquired and Havoc silos and forward lances are opened, primed and prepared to fire, sir." A weapons officer informed the admiral, "Awaiting to fire at your signal."

Another officer, this time a communications officer spoke up, "All ships reporting targeting solutions."

Cole took one more look towards the holotable, "Fire."

"Launching missiles."

"Firing forward lancer batteries."

Cole turned away from the holotable to look through the forward viewing port to see the resulting damage of his force attack on the incoming. The bright trails of the Havoc plasma missiles could be seen in the inky blackness of space as they raced towards their targets, their targeting and homing solutions helped by the immense processing power brought by the combined use of eight different AIs.

But just travelling in front of them were bright blue lances of energy. And it was these lances of energy that scored the first hits. Over a dozen lances smashed through the mashed-up armour of several ships, destroying less than half of the escorts and then three cruisers.

Whilst taking into account these destroyed ships, the missiles that had been locked onto those particular ships changed their targets to other ships or one of the many incoming attack craft. The vast majority were locked onto the attack craft.

Not a moment after the lances hit their targets, the missiles also joined in and the space in front of the steadily advancing Alliance fleet was illuminated by bright flashes of explosions as hundreds of attack craft were blown up along with more cruisers and escorts.

"Status report." Cole demanded as a feeling of satisfaction went through his being.

He didn't have to wait long before one of his bridge officers came back to him with the information that he wanted to hear, "Four of the cruiser class ships have been destroyed, eleven of the escorts have also been destroyed, along with a significant amount of attack craft." The sounds of tapping on holographic keyboards could be heard, "But the battleship-class ship is still heading our way. We're reading energy fluctuations, it seems capable of void shields."

Cole nodded, "Inform all ships to switch to independent targeting and fire. Have our own Sabres engage enemy craft, and all point defence turrets online." He turned around and tapped onto the still advancing ork battleship, "I want everyone of our guns aimed at the battleship. That seems to be the most worrisome."

"Yes sir."

The Admiral then took another look on the table before barking out a set of new orders, "Inform the _Endeavour_, _Reign of Fire, Everest _and _Taipan_, that they're to disengage and make immediate speed for the planet. They're not needed here and inform the rest to launch frigates."

XxX

(Command Deck - _Endeavour_)

"Captain!" One of Yurick's communication officers called out, "We've received orders from the Admiral to disengage and make straight for the planet."

Yurick turned from the holotable to look in the direction of the officer, "Orders received. Tell the ground units that they're to be seeing action sooner rather than later and to be ready to be deployed." He saw the officer nod to his order before turning back to the holotable and smiled when he noticed knew blue signatures enter the fray in the form of the frigates, launched from the other ships.

A soft, but barely noticeable lurch in the ship signified the engines being brought to full power as the speed they travelled through the void of space increased with each passing second. From the forward view port, slight flashes of light could be seen, indicating another destroyed ship, enemy or friendly.

On the holotable, the breaking of the _Endeavour_ along with three other ships could be seen as they smashed through the remains of the ork formation, or what was the semblance of the ork formation. Every now and then, the ship would shake lightly as a suicidal ork attack craft would kamikaze the ship. But its charge would be in vain as the shields held on.

'I wish they would all make more suicidal charges.' Yurick thought. It meant that none of his fighter planes would be destroyed in a battle and thus, he would suffer any casualties among his pilots.

He quickly checked on the image to check that his ships' fighters were following the ship and nodded to himself in satisfaction as he noted that they were. With a motion of the hand, Yurick swiped away the holographic image of the battle and brought another one instead, an image of the planet. On the planet, there were several points marked with a flag.

These flags represented the key objectives of the ground forces. The main ground offensive was to secure the last remaining human city that was still opposing the rushing orks, whilst the other objectives was to send other offensives that were to liberate human slave camps that were being used by the orks to build their weapons of war.

Satellite imagery showed that work was already starting on the ork bastardization of humanity's Titan Corps. He shook his head, orks were a curious race. Someone had to wonder how they were able to build anything they did, and make it work as their entire technology looked rather slapdash.

Bond appeared on the holotable, "Sir, Colonel Aimes is reporting that the Marines are ready for deployment." He notified the captain of the ship, "The same for Colonel Bankole of the Army."

Yurick nodded, "Good." His eyes casted to the image of the planet once more, "Prepare several payloads of level 3 Pulse Bombs."

Bond nodded his head, "Already working on it. They're be ready for bombardment before we even make orbit."

XxX

(Hangar Deck)

If Sam thought the hangar had been busy before when he first arrived on the ship, he had been incredibly uncorrect. Now with the ships entire personnel on board, it was sort of difficult to make his way towards his rally point without nearly running or bumping into someone. And with him in his power armour, it would hurt rather badly for anyone not in some sort of protective armour.

The hangar was a bustle of activity, orders could be heard being yelled to whoever they were being directed to. The sounds of vehicles being loaded up into the transport ships or other vehicles just making their way from the garage towards their own transport ships in question.

Above him, he noted groups of drones make their way towards their designated transport before slotting themselves inside and powering down. Saving power for when they'll be reactivated.

"Aran! Sam!"

Both soldiers stopped to turn to look at whoever had called out to them. They noted Henri coming towards them dressed in his pilot gear. The three soldiers bumped fists when Henri came to a halt in front of them.

"First combat drop, I can't believe this is happening." Henri said, although it was difficult to tell whether he was excited or scared. His body was giving all sorts of mixed signals.

Aran lightly punched him on the shoulder, "Oh its happening. Just try not to get yourself killed out there."

Henri shook his head in amusement, "I should be the ones telling you guys that. You guys will be the ones on the ground, taking cover and everything." He put his hands into his pockets and lazily smiled at the others, "And me? I'll have some heavy shielding and armour between me and any bullet."

Sam slowly nodded his head, "Yes…" He said slowly, "Because its so much better than walking around in a twenty-five feet tall robot being an obvious target to rockets and artillery. You're just lucky you aren't a Titan pilot."

Henri just gave him a look, "You only think that because you have some serious claustrophobia when it comes to the controls of a walker or Titan for that matter."

Sam went to open his mouth before a shout rang out, "Merrin! Stark!" Nilus shouted, "Stop socialising and get your asses over here on the double!"

Aran and Sam cringed slightly before they began to walk away from Henri, "See you on the other side Henri!"

Henri waved after them, "Try not to die on the way!" He shouted after them as he turned and went to his own duties.

Sam and Aran made their way towards their platoon rally point and after a telling off from Nilus, they immediately joined the formation. After taking a quick look around, they noticed the other platoons of their company present.

Sam was broken out his musings when a private channel opened between him and his new Co, "I hope this isn't going to be a recurring problem." She said, alluding to his and Aran's tardiness.

Sam would have shook his head in the negative, only to realise it would be silly since she wasn't looking at him at all, "No ma'am. That was just a one time thing."

That seemed to acquiesce her, "I'll hold you to that private." She said before cutting of the channel. Sam could feel Aran turn his head slightly in his direction, it seemed as if she had held the same conversation with Aran as well.

His attention was then caught in front of him by a person, dressed in the same power armour as everyone else, stand in front of them atop a pile of boxes, this was Captain Tomas Felix, company commander, "Alright C Company," He began speaking, "We've got our orders. You know what we have to do." The HUD of every single marine in the company lit up with a holographic image of their objective, "We're being sent down as part of the first wave to secure the town and if possible, begin to push the orks back. But our main objective is to secure the town until someone says otherwise."

Tomas took a long sweeping looks across the platoons of his company, "Alright, let's do this C Company! 1st, lead out!"

"Hoorah!" A cry went out before one of the leading platoons broke off from the formation and made for their own transport. This was soon followed by another platoon, until Sam found himself strapping himself into a seat in his platoons designated transport.

Sam took a look around at the others. It was difficult what the others were thinking about, or being able to see their expressions to give an indication of what exactly they were feeling, the helmets not making it any easy to see expressions and everything.

He wondered if they were feeling excited? Nervous? Scared? He knew he was feeling all those emotions at the same time.

He could scarcely believe it, two years ago he had signed up with Aran and Henri, straight out of school. He didn't think he was particularly patriotic, he signed up simply because his old man and brother were also in the forces. Different branch, but were still in the forces either way. His mom had certainly not been happy with the rather militaristic trend her family was taking.

He smirked behind his helmet, 'Fast forward two years and I'm being combat dropped onto an ork infested planet.' Orks were rather rare to come across Alliance space. From what he knew, during the days of the Federation back on Earth before they had to leave, the greenskins had been firmly kept in check by the Eldar and Federation Forces.

It seemed in the fifteen thousand years that the Federation had disappeared to the edges of the galaxy, the orks had free reign to spread themselves across the galaxy. That would prove a problem when the Alliance further expanded into the galaxy. Who knew how many Ork planets, or in the very rare cases that the orks managed to band themselves underneath one powerful leader who had more than a simple higher functioning process, ork stellar empire existed. If there was an ork empire, that would be problematic, could be rectified, but problematic nonetheless.

"Hey Lt." One of the marines called out to their new commander, "How come we aren't being dropped in?" He asked, in reference to the slightly faster and more insane way of making planetfall through the use of drop pods. Something that was seemingly exclusive to only the Marines.

The female lieutenant turned her head slightly in the direction of the marine, "Because the city we're dropping into is pretty fucking dense." She said bluntly, "We would cause more damage dropping hundreds of thousands of pods inside the city limit." Hell, the city was barely classified as a city. At best, it was a fairly large town by Alliance standards, "So sorry ladies, we're just going to have to suck this up and go in the boring way."

"That sucks." The marine let out in disappointment, "I would have just loved to see the expression on the orks and the humans down there when we drop in."

"Another time buttercups." Van remarked flippantly. She smirked behind her helmet, "But I hear something else will be dropping in." She finished off in a rather vague and mysterious manner.

The other marines turned to look at her with curiously raised eyebrows. If she was going to expand on what she said, she clearly wasn't showing it as she immediately went mum on the subject. Even when some of the other marines tried to prompt her to continue speaking. That only meant the group would have to find out when they made their way down to the surface.

Actually, that thought made Sam think, what if the humans on the planet below started firing on them if they thought they were unfriendly? Hell, how where they even going to communicate? He doubted they spoke the Basic language like everyone in the Alliance did.

He could feel worry start to creep in on him before shaking his head to get rid of the feelings, 'Well, I'm sure someone in the hierarchy thought of something like this.' He thought to himself, 'They just wouldn't send us into the meat grinder with no intel in the slightest.' That wasn't how combat was carried out by the Alliance. They literally took the age old maxim, 'Knowledge is power.' to the extremes. Well, as extreme as they could take it.

With that thought in his head, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. They still weren't close enough for the dropships to be launched, and he was sure at least a bombing run would come first before they dropped in. So it was best to just take in as much rest as he could now. Who knew how long this little fight was going to take?

XxX

The CA15 Lionheart was something of a fortress. A fortress that could fly and dominate the skies or travel across land and be literally a moving fortress. But it barely entered the frontlines itself, instead, it mostly stayed in the back of formations, acting as the command and control center of entire divisions or sometimes, armies.

This particular command vehicle, call-sign Voltaire, was the command vehicle of Major General Luis al-Ciani, overall commander of the 101st Assault Corps. The combat corps that had been given the task of relieving the humans of the town designated as Alpha-1 by military personnel.

Currently the general was in the midst of a conversation with another person, "So how is the language thing going on doctor?" The general asked with an even voice, "I don't want my men to find themselves being fired on. I want us to at least communicate with these people." He finished off, as he looked at the person he was talking to.

The doctor, a woman by the name of Yrenne Hewitt let out a small sigh, "Well, it could have been harder." She said, the faint blue glow on the outline of her body showing that she was nothing more than a holographic image, "Thanks to the Eldar from years ago, we have something of a basis of the language spoken by humanity during the years we were separated."

al-Ciani's expression tightened slightly, "That doesn't answer my question doctor." He stated rather bluntly. Which in truth, was rather accurate as the answer he received didn't answer his question in the slightest.

The doctor let ou a sigh, "I was getting to that." She almost snapped to the military man on the other side of the line. She coughed to clear her throat before speaking again, "As I was saying, if it wasn't for the Eldar, we wouldn't have a basic understanding of the language spoken by our fellows on the planet below." The general may have had an impassive expression on the outside, but Yrenne could somehow know that deep inside, he couldn't particularly careless about the basics, he just wanted to know one simple thing; whether communication was viable or not with the humans on the ground.

She sighed and nearly rolled her eyes. Why were some people so to the point? Couldn't they just enjoy some of the mysteries of life? "Yes, they'll be able to understand your men General. Thanks to 212's recordings of the radio waves, we managed to get a large, sizeable sample of the language spoken and thus was able to make our way from there." It would and should have taken longer if it wasn't for the fact that they had several high-powered AI's with enough processing power to be able to figure out and make the language understandable after 15,000 years of linguistic drift and hybridization.

Funnily enough, the language they spoke had some similarities with the Basic language of fifteen thousand years ago. But that was another study for another time.

al-Ciani nodded his head, "That's all I wondered to know Doctor. Thank you for your hard work." He said with apparent sincerity.

The woman laughed lightly, "You should be thanking the AIs. They did most of the work whilst the rest of us just sat around and played cards." She finished off with a light joke.

The general gave a curt nod of amusement, "It's been a pleasure Doctor, but duty calls."

Yrenne nodded her head, "Well, I have some stuff to do myself. I should leave you to your own duties." And with that, the image disappeared, signalling the end of the conversation.

"General," al-Ciani turned his head to see one his officers make his way towards him, "All Regiments are reporting in and are ready for drop."

He nodded his head and turned to the main tactical holo map that showed the town that would be the main starting point of this liberation of the planet, "Shard," He called out, and at the side of the map, a holographic body of a diamond lazily spinning around, "Contact Captain Estervaal, tell him he can begin bombardment."

"Done General," The AI spoke with a slightly synthetic sounding voice, "Shall I transmit orders for dropships to launch?"

al-Ciani let a small smile cross his lips, "Was I that obvious?"

If it could smile, or had the holographic body that would allow it to show such a feature, Shard would have done so mischievously, "I have worked with you for a while now sir." The AI mused, "Nearly 90% of the time, I can take a guess as to your next course of action."

"Of course you do," al-Ciani mused.

XxX

Henri came to a skidding halt in front of Frame. Through a technopathic link he had with his machine, or maybe it was its internal AI, his Frame lowered itself to one knee and brought out a hand. He stepped onto the outstretched hand and soon enough, the hand made its way towards its chest where it seemingly opened.

With a leap, he entered the control area of his Frame, turned around and took his seat. With a mental command, his helmet formed itself from the collar of his pilot armour. He leaned his head into his seat, were from the folds of his seat, a needle appeared that levelled itself with the base of Henri's neck.

Henri grimaced slightly when he prepared himself for what was about to happen next. With a slightly prick like feel, he felt the needle insert itself into the Neural Relay in the back of his neck.

Information quickly flooded his mind and he let out a slight shudder, "Argh, every single damn time. I hate it when that happens." He cursed and grumbled lightly to himself. If he knew exactly what involved being a pilot for walking machines of destruction, he would have just gone and become a grunt just like Aran and Sam.

"You're such a wuss," A voice remarked with amusement in its voice. That voice belonging to the AI of the walker he currently inhabited, Muse, "You need to man-up some more."

Henri's eyes rolled behind his helmet, "I am a manly man for your information. So you can go suck it." He rebutted, his voice holding no malice in it, even if what he said sounded harsh.

Muse stayed quiet for a few seconds before finally speaking, "See, the problem with that is, I don't really have anything to suck. It's tough getting something when you're an AI." The AI quipped before getting itself into the right mentality, "Come on, we can have a chat later. Right now, we have some greenskin killing to do."

"I don't really see any greenskins around."

"Oh shut up. You know what I meant."

XxX

"Captain," Bond said, "We've received the green to give our green skinned friends on the ground an early birthday present."

Yurick smiled as his ship took a geosynchronous orbit above the planet, and more importantly, directly above the main objective, "Then why don't we be angels and send it down?" He rhetorically asked, "I'm sure the Orks would love it. It's simply to die for."

Eoin cast a look at her commander, "You're trying too hard sir." She said in amusement before turning her attention to the weapons suite, "Well you heard the captain. Bombs away."

"They're missiles actually." Bond helpfully pointed out like the dutiful AI that he was.

Eoin didn't seem to appreciate what Bond had said or particularly care, "Tomato. To-mah-to."

"Two completely different things."

XxX

Several silos slid open across the _Endeavour_, and those weren't the only silos as silos across the three other ships slid open. Not long afterwards, missiles were shot out from those very same silos and sped towards their intended target.

XxX

The Ork horde that had been in the process of attacking the last defiant bastion of humanity on the planet with all manner of weapons that included various ramshackle vehicles among various other things came to a halt when one of them noticed several things streaking down from the sky.

They weren't the only ones to come to a sudden halt. The Imperial defenders had also come to a halt wondering what those objects were as they sped their way through the sky towards the ground. They soon found out not long afterwards.

Rana couldn't believe her eyes when the first object hit the ground and promptly exploded. The explosion wasn't loud or anything like that that indicated some sort of explosion. Instead, it was something of a dull thud before a pulse or wave of invisible something burst out from the point of contact.

It spread out in a magnificent large dome like shape obliterating any object within its path. Nothing seemed to be able to stop it, she could hear the somewhat panicked cries of the orks as they tried to run away from the expanding domes.

But unfortunately, they were running no where near fast enough to escape the domes as they spread out. She could hear some worried chattering that the domes would soon encompass them and some people were already backing away prepared to run, but unable to take their eyes away from the sight in front of them.

They shouldn't have worried, for as soon as the domes appeared, they soon disappeared, leaving behind large craters of nothing. There wasn't even any sort of blood in the slightest that indicated that a large amount of orks had been killed by whatever had struck the orks down.

Silence soon followed, even the orks just stood there wondering what the hell had just happened. It wasn't until one of the troopers spoke did that silence get removed, "Okay, what the hell just happened?" He asked no-one, hoping for an answer. Unfortunately, no-one could give him an answer, as it pretty much everyone didn't know what had just happened themselves.

Instead, mutterings of the Emperor intervening to save his subjects from massacre was beginning to quickly make round and that soon after this, reinforcements or the Emperor's forces would come down and rid the planet of the ork infestation.

Well, they were sort of correct, but at the same time, they were wrong. Correct in thinking that reinforcements had come to rid of the planet of the orks and save them, but at the same time in thinking that it was actually the Imperial Guard or Navy doing the rescuing.

Rana, out of the sheer need to let out a sigh of massive relief looked up into the sky. And that's when she saw them, strange objects in the sky coming down at them in a formation, 'Dropships?' She thought as she squinted her eyes at the sight. They were too far away for her to see them clearly, but she hoped they were dropships. But since they were flying in formation, it more than likely meant they were dropships.

Which as far as she was concerned, was very, very good news.

XxX

Colonel Castor, looked through his magnoculars at maximum setting as the soldiers around him started cheering at the sights of the dropships coming into view quickly. He wasn't cheering for a simple reason, the ships he was seeing through his magnoculars definitely weren't Imperial.

They were far too smooth, 'Eldar?' He thought before mentally shaking his head of that thought, why would the Eldar risk their own lives to help a human colony? It didn't make sense for that mysterious species to do such a thing. And even if there was something for the Eldar on the planet, they would have used the conflict between the humans and orks as a way to silently get what they want and then promptly leave.

So if they weren't Eldar, just what or who the hell were they? It couldn't be an unidentified force of xenos could it? Because if it was, he doubted his men stood a chance. They were low in numbers and supplies and those dropships were pretty damn big and should be able to carry a large amount of troops or vehicles. Maybe even both.

'...They couldn't be here to help us could they?' The thought went throughout his head before he quickly dismissed it as traitorous and heretical. Xenos were to be killed as their forms were an affront to the perfection that was humanity. But then again, he had served in enough campaigns were sometimes, Imperial forces would work together when Eldar forces against a common foe, so he was slightly more open minded than most when it came to the alien. But that still didn't mean he wouldn't put a laser between the eyes of an alien if asked or just for existing.

But still, there was nothing he could do about these new arrivals. If they were friendlies, and he was using that to the loosest sense of the word, then what would happen after they helped then? Would they absorb them into empire? If they did, then they would have to wait until Imperial reinforcements or punitive force made its appearance for any hope.

Through his magnoculars, he noted far more sleeker and fast moving craft break off from the flying formation and immediately engage the ork craft. This simple act brought even more cheers from the soldiers around him. He wished they would just plain shut up and let him think.

Apparently, this sudden attack of the ork craft was what the orks needed to resume their attack on the city. He had to curse as he immediately scanned his perimeter. Some of the defenders had been caught slacking and the orks had managed to make a fair push before someone smartly decided to start firing back at them to halt the push.

Even though he hated it, some of his hopes and wishes, as traitorous as it was, hoped that whoever these xenos were, they had brought a lot of ground forces to help them against the enemy they were facing currently.

"Colonel, Captain Habif's position is being overrun!"

Castor immediately snapped his head and the currently attached magnoculars in the direction of the PDF captain's position and had to curse. They were being overrun, he could already see a messy melee starting to form, and the troopers were losing rather badly.

"Frakk." He cursed. His magnified view was then obstructed by one of the larger dropships of the unknowns that had appeared above Habif's position. He zoomed out and saw this was only one of three ships and all of them were big.

He then watched them open fire on the ork lines with some form of weapon that fired some blue coloured energy at the speed of a Heavy Bolter into the midst of the orks. A satisfying grin came across his lips as he saw greenskin blood, gore and bodies fall to the ground, never getting back up again.

So _maybe _they were friendlies.

XxX

Rana had to cover her ears when she heard the loud whirl of the weapons of the ship above her fire into the ork lines. Just moments ago, she had found herself into a bit of a tangle with an ork that had tried to cut her down with one of its crude choppas.

She had quickly gave it a nice try award in the form of a laser into the head. Close quarters fighting wasn't her thing.

She looked, her ears still covered and saw the underneath of the ship open in a large circular pattern. She wondered what that was for, before her eyes widened and she quickly had to dive to the side when several objects dropped down from the opening.

She really hoped they weren't bombs. When she heard the dull thuds of the objects hitting the ground, she really hoped they weren't bombs. She turned around to look when she noticed that no explosion had occurred.

Rana's eyes widened slightly when she saw the dark armoured figures that had landed on the ground and immediately started engaging the orks, not even bothering to register her fellow humans around her. One of the armoured figures, the last one turned his head to look at her, well, she thought it was looking at her, she couldn't tell, before it quickly snapped its head to the battle in front of it and immediately went into to join its compatriots.

Then what happened next somewhat terrified her as something landed on the ground soon afterwards with a heavy thud. Her eyes widened slightly as she saw the towering figure of whatever it was.

It was big, she couldn't tell how big it was, but it was nearly as big as a house and looked mechanical in nature. Like the armoured figures, it had something of a humanoid form with two legs, two arms, a large broad torso and a head. In its arms was a large object that was shaped like a rifle which she guessed was its weapon.

As soon as it landed, it suddenly lifted into the sky, firing its rifle-like weapon into the ork lines. She swore she could feel the slight thuds of the ground as each of its rounds hit the ground.

As if that wasn't enough, another dropped down from the ship, before soon enough, there were six of them. Fighting the orks.

Rana just had a stupefied expression on her face, something that was shared between her and her fellow defenders. She wondered if these mysterious persons that clearly weren't the Imperial Guard, were to turn on them, what could they do?

XxX

(Aboard the _Apollo_)

Caesar's holographic form appeared on the holotable, "Admiral, the Marines have made groundfall at Alpha-1." The AI informed the Admiral.

Cole nodded as he let a small smile on his face, "How did the greenskins like the initial bombardment?" He questioned, alluding to the planned initial bombardment of Pulse Bombs.

The tactical map on the holotable in front of him changed from the ongoing space battle into one of the ground, "The greenskin horde has been split into two due to the bombardment. As you can see, the largest of the two groups is the one furthest away from Alpha-1 and the smallest is the one the 101st is currently taking care off." The AI informed, the tactical map moving from the largest massing of red icons, to the second smallest of red icons that was currently filled with blue and yellow icons that were slowly pushing the smaller mass of red icons back.

He noticed that the larger mass had started to move towards the smaller one and frowned, the ground forces would be needing reinforcements soon. The marines may have been highly trained and had the best equipment available, but they were outnumbered.

With a quick motion of the hand, the admiral turned his attention to the ongoing battle happening right now, "We need to make our way to the planet and deliver our own ground forces." He said as he eyed the last remaining ork ship, the Battleship that was being too stubborn to be just be blown into smithereens, "I'm tired of playing, get us a targeting solution for our main gun."

"I had one ages ago." Caesar said with a slight smirk on his expression, "I was just waiting for you to actually tell me to bring one up."

Cole smiled, "Then line us up and inform the _End of Night, Dreamless Winter _and _Interceptor_ to break off and head for the planet. The _Apollo_ has this." He barked his orders to his communication officers who quickly began relaying the orders to the captains of the ships.

On the tactical map, the two Battleships and Carrier that had been in fighting alongside the _Apollo_ could be seen breaking off and heading for the planet. Cole felt the ship lurch gently forward as its engines worked to get itself into a trajectory with the Ork battleship.

Which was made easier by the fact that the Battleship or whoever had been captaining the ship had been intent on going after the _Apollo_ on the get go and threw everything it had on his ship. Every now and then, the ship would shake slightly as one of its main guns battered into the shielding of the ship.

"Sir," Lt. Lasky, his weapons officer cried out, "Main weapon is locked and ready to fire."

Cole cast one last look at the ork battleship, he wished that it had been a far tougher opponent than this. He deactivated the tactical map and turned around to look at its impending destruction, "Fire." The command came in a quiet voice, that one would think no-one would have heard him.

But the fact that from the viewing port in front of him, a large bolt of energy was fired from the _Apollo_'s main cannons was more than enough to show that his order had been heard. He watched as the blue coated projectile sped through the void of space before impacting the battleship.

It's shields had held, only for a couple of moments before dissipating, allowing the bolt to melt its way through the ship. The super-heated plasma slug burning everything it touched before reaching the core and exploding in a violent show of light.

Cole watched the fireworks for a few moments before giving out his next orders, "Let's make our way to the planet. We've got some grunts who are probably jonesing for some ground action right about now." He said lightheartedly.

A round of light laughter went throughout the command deck before the ship lurched forward as it sped its way towards the planet in question. He slightly had to wonder what the humans on the planet would react like when they learn that after saving them from the orks, their planet was going to be integrated into the Alliance?

Well, it wasn't for him to question such things, the Alliance had been preparing for this day before its conception. Whether they liked it or not, those humans would soon find themselves under Alliance rule.

'Well, that's a thought for another day.'

XxX

"_Semper vigilant - Always vigilant._" Alliance Navy Motto.

Alliance Navy

If the Imperial Navy could be described as the Shield of the Imperium, then the same could be applied to the Alliance Navy. Within the Alliance Forces, the Navy has a myriad of tasks that fall under its jurisdiction.

Due to being the space arm of the Navy, it is entrusted with the transportation of troops to distant battlefields on other planets, the protection of trade routes and Alliance shipping from pirates and other space-borne dangers. To do this, the Navy has thousands of technologically advanced ships ranging from super-capital ships like supercarriers to small fighters or bombers.

It's most important task is to serve as the shield that protects Alliance space from invaders and repel them in space. And although it has never suffered a serious incursion into Alliance space, various training, simulations and wargames had shown that it is capable of reacting quickly to incursions into Alliance space.

The Navy practices the military maxim of 'He who defends everything, defends nothing.' a maxim from an ancient Earth general. They do this by having their fleets stationed on large military stations or planets with a certain amount of distance from various planetary systems. Each number of systems would be underneath the care of one particular fleet and so and so.

This doesn't mean that planets are just left to fend for themselves. On every planet, there is some sort of military station of varying degrees of size that had a naval detachment attached to it, its duty to patrol the system and serve as a vanguard for the remaining fleet to appear and drive away invaders.

Due to advanced long-range radars, it would be safe to say that most of the time, Battlegroups or Fleets would be dispatched long-before invaders had made an appearance in a particular system. Because of this, unlike its Imperial counterpart, the Navy and other armed forces don't take months or even years to respond to invasions or crises.

The only known forces in the galaxy able to bypass this are the Necrons with their phasing technology and sometimes the Eldar and their darker kin with the Webways.

"_See, with the Marines, it more than likely means that whenever a fights afoot, we're going to be the first boots on the ground. The boots that set-up the forward bases, the boots that secure primary objectives. And after we've rolled down the red carpet, that's when those slackers in the Army finally join in. It might sound like it sucks, but trust me when I say this, we get the best shit out of everybody else because of that." _ Staff Sergeant Avram Gunny

Alliance Marine Corps

The best of the best...well according to them. Other services vehemently disagree with them on this observation. But that's considered natural as there is considered a rivalry between all the armed services of the Alliance.

The Marines, the vast majority of the time, make-up the main components of an expeditionary force or vanguard, sent out ahead of the main force to secure landing zones, set-up forward bases and such. Because of this, and the knowledge that most of the time, they would be dropping into the thick of it, Marine equipment is better than their Army counterparts.

An example of this would be the Aegis Powered Assault Armour that is a standard among every marine, whilst the Army deals with a somewhat more relaxed armour than the Marines themselves. This is considered something of a necessary evil simply because of the nature of Marine duties and tasks that are given to them in combat situations.

Due to these tasks they take out, Marine training is considered to be amongst the most jarring and brutal in the services. The service always expects more than 100% from each and every one of its soldiers.

Rank Structure:

Enlisted Ranks: Pvt, PFC, LCpl, Cpl, Sgt, SSgt, GySgt, MSgt, SgtMaj, SgtMajMC

Commissioned Ranks: 2ndLt, 1stLt, CPT, Major, LtCol, Col, BGen, MajGen, LtGen, Gen

Regimental Structure:

5 per fireteam

10 persons per squad

50 per platoon

500 per company

2,000 per battalion

10,000 per regiment

"_It's a tank. A walking tank, but that would be just be nitpicking."_ Captain Jeff Moreau

Frame Battle Walkers

The Imperial Sentinel Walker is the poorly conceived STC design of one of the predecessors of the Alliance Frame Battle Walkers. The standard _Paladin_-class Frame although standing a couple meters taller than its imperial counterpart, the Paladin-class has enough firepower in its arsenal to rival the Tau Empire's Riptide Battlesuits and the smaller, _Knight_-class Frame being of equal firepower to the Tau Empire's own Crisis Battlesuits.

Depending on its classification and size, Frames usually work in squads of three for _Paladin_-classes and others whilst part of an armoured regiment with the smaller _Knight-_class Frame can work in sizes of entire platoons or in rare cases when they're not part of mechanised infantry regiment, entire regiments themselves.

_Paladin_-class Specifications.

Height: 5.4M

Weight: 4 Tonnes

Width: 2.8M

Crew: 1 Pilot, 1 AI Co-Pilot

Max Speed: 70kph on jetpack

Weaponry: Variable; Standard load-out of a Plasma Repeater Blaster, Fusion Close-Quarters Energy Blade, Wrist-mounted Laser Blaster & Shoulder-mounted missile pods.

Armour Type: Nano-Titanium Alloy & Personal Energy Shielding.

_Knight_-class Specifications.

Height: 2.3M

Weight: 2.7 Tonnes

Width: 2M

Crew: 1 Pilot

Max Speed: 48kph on jetpack

Weaponry: Variable;Standard load-out of a Plasma Repeater Blaster, Fusion Close-Quarters Energy Blade, Wrist-mounted Laser Blaster.

Armour: Nano-Titanium Alloy & Personel Energy Shielding.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 3, boom! Hope you enjoy it, and I have to say, space battles aren't really my forte since this is actually the first space battle I have ever wrote, but I'll get better with practice. Ground battles thought are more my forte, so you'll see some violent ork-slaying next chapter with Sam and co. yey.<strong>

**And for those wondering, I plan to make this a ridiculously long saga that goes on towards the end of the 41st millenium. For those who noticed, this story takes place early on in the millenium and I'm still planning out somethings e.g. if whether the Alliance should involve itself in the 12th Black Crusade i.e. The Gothic War and various other events of the Warhammer universe, small or large.**

**Well, that's all folks.**

**Raiden out.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I don't own Warhammer.**

* * *

><p>With a dull thud created from the sounds of his boots hitting the palace roof, Saren had already taken a quick look of his surroundings to make sure he was in the all clear. He shouldn't have bothered, there was no-one on the roof, but instincts and training had made it automatic to take in his surroundings.<p>

He took a quick look up only able to see the slight shimmer of his cloaked transport rise off into the sky, back into orbit. There wasn't a return trip planned. If everything worked out well, he would be going back into orbit with one of the other transports that were delivering the conventional troops to the ground.

A slight shiver went through his body which he identified as pre-mission jitters. Something that he still hadn't managed to shake them off, even though this wasn't his first solo assignment or sortie.

With a quick mental command, his sleek, black armour of interlocking ceramic plates immediately vanished from sight as he engaged the cloaking mechanism. To anyone who looked directly at him, all they would see would be nothing as he would be all but invisible to anyone who looked.

His stealth system engaged, he immediately made for the rooftop exit to carry out his mission. He took a quick glance to the large, spacious gardens on the manor he was in, and although he had seen it when he was passing by through the sky, he couldn't help but be awed by the sheer quantity of refugees in the gardens. As spacious as the mansion was, it couldn't fit all of them, and such they spilled out into the streets for more than a dozen blocks.

But from orbital scans and the data that was in front of them, this planet _had_ a far larger population than this. Most had been killed, others captured by the orks and the rest were refugees. He could see that the vast majority of them were praying, although the concept of prayer or a higher deity was foreign to him, he could understand where they were coming from.

He reached the exit door and began to descent into the mansion. He opened the comm channel that was linked to his handler and superiors, "Joker here, insertion successful. Proceeding with mission." He spoke into his helmets radio, the speakers located onto his helmet muted so that his voice didn't travel anywhere past the helmet.

"_Copy that Saren. Good hunting."_

With that taciturn reply, the comm channel was quickly cut-off, leaving Saren alone to complete his mission. Technically, he wasn't alone, accompanying him on this mission was a subroutine of an AI that was there to help him with his mission.

The mission was simple, he was to infiltrate the palace and find any sort of information that could shed light for the Alliance to see whether they were dealing with just a single planet state or whether this was just a colony world of a much larger organisation. This building had been chosen simply because that it was the most secure and was currently home to the refugee population of either the planet or the settlement. It was determined that the building was probably some sort of administrative building of some kind, and thus had the greatest chance of holding much needed information they could be looking for.

Luckily for him, the mission wasn't supposed to be difficult in any sort of manner. The palace was lightly guarded apart from the soldiers serving to keep the order among the refugees, and because of this, it was unlikely of him to run into any sort of trouble. But that didn't mean he wouldn't be careful with his assignment. It was always best to expect the unexpected.

With an eerie calm, Saren stalked through the vast hallways of the mansion, his feet making soundless footsteps on the ground with each step he took. He couldn't tell whether to attribute this fact to the training he under went through or to the not-so-distant sounds of combat that was currently taking place inside the settlement.

He didn't have any doubt that Alliance forces wouldn't come out of this engagement with a win, but it wasn't his place to care for what they did. It was his place to do his own bit for the Alliance, which was doing the current task at hand.

He eventually reached the door that led into the room of the objective. Even though he knew it was empty, he did a quick scan from the other side of the door to make sure that no-one was inside and that there weren't any automated security programs. Such programs were rather common in the offices of high-ranking officials in Alliance space.

'But this isn't Alliance space.' He mused when he saw that the scans showed nothing to worry about. He didn't know how to feel about that. Clearly judging by the look of the office, it definitely belonged to someone important, therefore, such a person should have some sort of security. There wasn't even a panic room or anything like that.

But once more, it wasn't his place to scrutinize how effective the security of the office was. He gently opened the door and closed it behind him, careful to make sure it didn't make any loud sounds that could alert anyone of his presence.

After that, he turned around and took a quick look of the office. It was large, nothing unexpected there and had several bookcases filled to the brim with books, that looked more like tomes by the size of them.

But Saren's interest was on the rather gothic looking object located on a large desk at the far end of the room. He had to raise an eyebrow at the size of the object before quickly making his way towards it. He had to be careful here as the desk sat right in front of a large window that faced the mansion courtyard where all the people were located.

He took a quick look at the device, trying to find some sort of port that would allow him to place the data chip that contained the AI subroutine into its system. He was about to give up and call it in for any additional instructions before noticing an opening that looked like a port, but since the computer was rather alien in design to him, he couldn't tell. Nonetheless, he removed the datachip from its pouch and held it in front of the opening.

A smile creeped onto his face when he saw a faint blue glow connect the chip to the large object, "I have to say, I'm not impressed." A slightly synthetic sounding voice rang out from inside his helmet, "Not impressed at all. I was expecting more, with this, it won't even be a challenge to get into the system." The voice finished with a slight huff.

Saren placed the chip down near the opening, "I don't really care. You do what you're supposed to do, and I'll do what I'm supposed to do."

"Which is?"

Saren let out a small shrug as he panned the room, "There's probably something here of note. I'll go through the office looking for files or anything like that."

"You know this could just happen to be the mansion of an extremely wealthy individual right?" The AI pointed out, "It might not even be an administrative building like we think it is."

"Maybe, maybe not." Saren said with a slight nod of the head in agreement as he opened drawers, "But its better than nothing."

Silence reigned for a few moments before the AI replied, "I guess."

The two beings went about their own tasks with a silence between them. The AI diligently working itself into the system of the rather primitive looking computer and the operative going through files, not having to read them himself as the camera attached to his helmet took in all the writings on them. He even went out of his way to take a look at some of the books of the bookcases, but quickly discarded the vast majority of them as they all seemed to be religious in nature by the initial translations of the titles.

"This might be take longer than we thought." The AI said as it broke the silence.

Saren didn't turn his head to face the AI as he continued to scour the office, "How come?"

If it had bothered to show its avatar, it would have had a grimace on its face, "I'm the system, but none of them are really networked to each other, limiting the amount of paths I can move in. And the system itself is primitive in so many ways its making it difficult to hack int-Uh oh."

This time, Saren did turn his head, "...Uh oh?" He repeated warily, "That doesn't sound good."

"It isn't." The AI replied curtly, "There's something in the system with me."

Saren's eyebrows shot up in alarm, "Another AI?" If it was another AI, for all he knew, it would have alerted someone to the breach in security that was currently occurring right now.

"No, I don't think so." The AI replied, unsurely. Which was a first. There was very, very rare occasions when an AI was unsure about something, "I don't think its an AI, but at the same time, it somewhat feels like an AI. A primitive one, but something that feels like an AI nonetheless. It's actively trying to resist me."

Saren had already made his way back to the desk, "Has it alerted anyone to our presence?" He asked as a hand hovered over his side-arms holster, one eye kept on the door.

"No." The AI replied, "Like I said, this system isn't at all networked. I haven't even come across a single alarm or security system or anything like that. Although whoever maintains it should be liable to get sacked. I don't think the data had been defragged in god knows how many years."

Saren held back a sigh of relief but that still didn't stop him from keeping on alert, "Take whatever data you find. I don't want to stay here for any longer than we have too."

"I was already doing that, thank you very much."

XxX

The moment that his feet had hit the ground, whatever feelings of nervousness that Sam had been feeling were immediately shot out of the window. He had been the last of his platoon to hit the ground and thus he had taken a liberty to take a few moments to get a look of his surroundings. He had felt eyes on him, hell, he had seen that nearly all the humans in the area were looking at him and his platoon with widened eyes of surprise, and some happiness located somewhere in there.

His wandering eyes had lingered on one of the planets' colonists who had been fighting against the orks. She didn't seem like a soldier, or a militia of any kind. He could only guess that she had been a volunteer, someone fighting just for the sake of survival.

Having had his moment, he had immediately snapped his head to the front and quickly moved away from the drop point towards his platoon. The several thuds he had heard afterwards reminded him that he had been standing underneath several walkers that would have most likely crushed him if they had dropped down to the ground from the dropship.

The first order of business was to push the orks back and create a defensive line located on the original native defensive line. It had to be his platoons luck that their perimeter happened to be the one that had been overrun by orks. And thus what followed next was brutal close quarters combat.

In some cases, some of the marines had to fight hand to hand against the orks, which was not the brightest of ideas to do. Orks were bigger and seemingly excelled when it came to chopping things into bits with their choppas.

Not even five minutes had passed into the intense combat that some of the vitals of people in his platoon started flatlining. With that knowledge, the thought that he could actually die hit him, but he put that thought to the back burner for now as he fought to live.

Sam fired three bursts of plasma bolts that ended up landing themselves into three different orks boyz that had been charging at him yelling an unintelligible war cry. He felt a round hit him in the head, his shield meter dropping by a noticeable amount from the hit, causing him to stumble before he decided to take that as a cue to get into some cover.

Sam made his way towards a half standing wall, all the way firing accurately into the rambling horde of orks charging their way. He didn't need to aim at anyone particularly, he could just fire blindly and he would more than likely still end up hitting an ork.

He slid into cover just as a hail of gunfire from the ork horde passed him over. He popped out of cover to deliver his own bursts of plasma bolts and watched with satisfaction as they hit, causing orks to drop to the ground, some with noticeable holes in their chests or in some cases, missing parts of their heads.

From around his area, Sam could see that his platoon had managed to make a defensive line after pushing the initial ork assault back and was now promptly and preferredly engaging the orks from long range from behind cover. He could hear the cracks and whines of the staccato fire that came from the assault rifles as they fired into the ork lines.

It seemed as if the orks didn't really care about getting into any sort of cover to provide some sort of protection. They preferred just blindly charging in with intent to get up close and personal with the marines, firing their guns blindly in the general direction of the enemy whilst waving about their choppas.

Some never managed to get that far as they were mowed down with brutal efficiency. The marines had finally managed to get their grove on and were repaying the ork in kind for the initial casualties that had been brought onto them from the close quarters engagements.

A particularly large ork push started forming and was prepared to start charging their line, but only to be cut down when a gunship made a strafing run on their location. No-one had called in the air support, but it was much obliged.

From the skies, three Paladin walkers dropped into the midst of the ork lines, crushing several orks between them underneath their heavy thuds on the ground. One immediately bared its weapon before firing off an indecent flame in its perimeter, setting alight any ork in range as it spun around.

The other two decided to get a little bit more personal as they activated their Fusion Blades and ruthlessly began to decapitate, eviscerate among other violent gruesome ends. The orks finding their ends through this method didn't even bleed, the sheer heat from the blades searing their flesh to stop any bleeding from occurring.

After rampaging in the ork lines for several moments, they immediately took off into the sky by activating their repulsor lift systems, but left behind a barrage of missiles that sent ork body parts flying haphazardly into the air.

Chatter began to circulate through the platoon commchannel as they continued to kill of whatever was left of the orks that had been underneath the assault of the group of three walkers, "Well, they just had to take all the fun didn't they?"

"There's something wrong with you if you think this is fun."

"Hey, I'm currently stopping myself from having a breakdown right now through sheer wit and comedy alone, leave me be."

"What I want to know is when the locals are going to get out of their trances and actually help us fight off these orks. Last time I checked, this is _their _world."

"I think they're too busy admiring us. Shock and awe and all that other stuff."

The banter was cut to a close by their new lieutenant who issued some new orders for her platoon, "Cut the chatter ladies, we still have an objective to take." She pointed out from wherever she was located amidst the platoon, "So get to it!"

Hearing their orders, the platoon slowly advanced, moving from cover to cover, continuingly firing into whatever was left of the ork masses that had been cut down to size by the paladins. Still, they continued to come at them, even with their low numbers, but Sam could tell a change was about.

They didn't come as ferociously as before, nor with the same life abandoning zeal. Instead, they were more worry than anything, and seemed to be on the edge of breaking. It seemed orks were truly fearless when their strength lied in numbers. And those numbers had been brutally cut down.

Sam couldn't help but be glad of the fact that he wore a helmet on his head that filtered in only air or recycled his own expelled CO2 emission. He had promptly switched to the recycling function when he realised he didn't want to know what cooked ork smelt like as he passed some bodies that had been at the end of the Paladin assault.

He could see the slight red embers of the seared skin that had been burned black, the smoke from the orks slowly rising and wafting into the air. He took a quick glance back, he felt rather sorry for the natives, they didn't seem to have any sort of masks at all to protect themselves from the smell.

His motion sensor picked up something, and Sam raised his head to see several dozen streaks in the air coming at them. He was about to cry out missiles before his zoom function noted that the missiles had orks attached to them.

He squinted his eyes as he tried to collect what he was seeing and coming to the only suitable conclusion that he could think off, "...Are those supposed to be jetpacks?" That was the only thing that he could come to explain why a bunch of orks where yelling and howling at them as they sped towards their position, choppas crazily waving in the air.

Aran had managed to traverse to Sam's position through the battle and like him, was currently eyeing the strange ork advance, but unlike Sam, he was eyeing the ork advance through the scope of his rifle, "Seems like it." He muttered as he fired a round.

Aran's rifle was modelled after the old bolt-rifles of old. It had a slow rate of fire, but the rifle had some of the strongest stopping power for a rifle in the Alliance armoury. It had to be, it was a hand-held rail gun that fired a high-explosive or piercing round that could tunnel its way through nearly everything if the round was fully charged. And even when it wasn't fully charged, it was more than likely it would put a hole through several objects before eventually coming to a halt.

The round sped through the air at a speed far faster than that could be followed by the human eye. It burrowed a hole through the chest of one of the howling orks so fast that the ork didn't even register the hit, but definitely registered the explosion that occurred afterwards as the ork hit the missile like jetpack on its back.

The explosion caused a series of explosions from nearby Stormboyz, killing several of the dozens of orks before they had even made landfall. Not long afterwards, the rest of the platoon immediately snapped their guns up and started firing on the orks, whittling their numbers down with each confirmed kill.

"WAAAGH!"

Sam's head snapped down from the sky to the front and cursed underneath his breath. The flying orks had been nothing more than a distraction to gain the attentions of the marines to allow the orks to regroup and immediately make another charge at them. It seemed as if the remaining orks were underneath the command of a capable leader of some skill, brutal enough to sacrifice some of its soldiers. But then again, brutality pretty much explained ork 'kultur' as it was.

Aiming his gun down from the sky and back to earth, he was about to unleash plasma bolts into the newly rallied ork horde only for a stream of red light to fly past Sam and Aran's position into the mass of orks charging, felling many of them. Several marines turned their heads and saw that the human natives on the planet had now joined the fray as they surged forward.

"About damn time." He heard Aran mutter as he continued to pick off orks, taking his time to switch between the flying orks and the orks on the ground.

Turning his attention away from the sudden reinforcements, Sam popped out of cover and released a full burst of pulse fire into several ork positions. Even if it was just a bit, the ork fire just dropped by a bit. From the corner of his eye, he saw one of the natives get hit straight in the face by one of the ork blasters, creating a very gory hole into the head of the unfortunate victim.

Even though they were sustaining casualties, mostly from artillery fire, the occasional lucky hit from an ork blasta and the very rare occasions and ork managed to get past all the incoming laser and pulse fire to get up close and personal with either a marine or native where there brute strength came into play.

As the marines of Delta platoon and their unlikely allies advanced, they ended up joining with an arm of one of the other platoons and natives that had been fighting in a different area. The ork horde was being whittled down in number, and the fact that their numbers were being brutally cut down was beginning to show. They were less likely to charge head in and some where even taking cover behind some destroyed buildings or other objects.

"Incoming!"

The shout rang out and Sam's motion sensor picked up something from the sky. The damned Stormboyz again. He snapped his rifle up, only to have his eyes widen and have to roll to the side to quickly evade a Stormboy that had nearly crashed into him.

The Stormboy bounced off the ground a few times as he came to a halt, leaving a bloody trail from his failed surprise attack. Sam cast a look at the ork, expecting it to get up but noticed the odd angles its arms and head was in. It was dead, 'But one could never be too sure.' He thought as he fired a burst of pulse fire into the ork's body.

Once again, his sensor picked up movement and he quickly turned around only to find himself clubbed in the face with a choppa. The hid caused his head to reverberate around the small confines of his helmet as he stumbled backwards.

"WAAAGH!" The Stormboy bellowed out as he dived in Sam's direction intent on finishing him off.

Aran came to Sam's rescue as he immediately switched to the secondary fire of his rifle and released a burst of kinetic energy at the ork. The sheer force of a supersonic speeding mag train hitting it straight in the side, sending its limb body flying aimlessly to the ground.

The taller boy made his way towards Sam and helped him up, some of his fellow squad mates providing covering fire from other Stormboyz who had dropped in from the skies, "You alright?" He asked, voice slightly holding a tone of worry at his friend.

Sam held his head before taking a quick shake of the nod to lift away the stars, "Urgh," He let out a small groan of pain as the stars and black spots swarmed his vision, slowly fading away, "Who knew getting hit in the head by a choppa hurt so much?"

"I think that's their intent, what with the fact that its shaped like an axe and all."

Sam retook his rifle and rejoined the battle, "Shut up." He retorted as he fired onto the ork lines, every now and then feeling a satisfaction with every Stormboy he downed, "Let's just kill some orks and be done with this."

"_4,7,9,"_ Captain Felix spoke over the comm channel to the three platoons, "_You have ork vehicles coming your way."_

"Copy that," Lt. Van's voice drifted over the channel, "How bad is it?"

"_Ork battlewagons and what seems to be a few looted armour elements, probably from the local forces."_ Felix informed the team, "_Get your men into cover. Paladin elements are coming to reinforce your position."_

Van and the other platoon commanders didn't even need to relay the orders to their platoons. With their orders clear, the marines immediately went and found themselves some cover. Some took positions in alleyways, others in buildings, making sure to turn the winding roads in their area were killzones through the laying of time-delayed grenades or the marines with anti-armour capabilities taking residence on locations that allowed them an unrestricted firing lane.

Sam stopped and took a look at the locals and was rather impressed. Seemingly seeing that their unknown allies were preparing for something by taking cover, they had also had taken the initiative to get themselves into cover themselves. Some somewhat warily took positions near some of the marines.

After they had set themselves up, not long afterwards, the roar of badly tuned vehicles could be heard from the distance, somewhat drowning the yelling and howling of the orks. Not long afterwards, the first vehicle turned into a street that overlooked Sam's position. He didn't fire, nor did the others as they waited for them to come closer.

They did come closer and the lead vehicle, a ramshackle looking thing that looked like it was about to fall apart and breakdown then and there, sped over one of the grenades, which immediately detonated, launching the wagon into the air in a fiery light show, the armoured orks riding in the rear crying out in surprise.

Not even a second after the detonation, the marines and local defenders opened fire on the ork buildings. Beside him, he could hear the distinctive hum of Aran's rifle as it charged up for two seconds before firing a glowing projectile into an advancing tank. He must have hit the fuel tank or something relatively important as the tank lit up in a fiery explosion, killing the orks riding on it and definitely the orks that had been operating it inside.

When the orks had finally started to return fire, they had found themselves trapped in the street and instead of falling back, they just foolhardy charged on. Motion sensor coming to his rescue once more, Sam managed to pull Aran and himself away when a hail of gunfire peppered the location they had just been in.

He turned his head to face the newest threat and had to raise an eyebrow in surprise. It was an ork, a ork up to the nines in all sorts of armour. Aran quickly got to his feet and aimed his rifle at the new unwanted arrival, "The Warboss?" He queried as he fired at it, only for the bullet to hit the armour, causing the armoured ork to stumble backwards, hurting but not dead, "Damn, that is some armour." That would take another shot or two from his rifle before it could be overloaded and he doubted the ork would be willing to give him that much time.

Sam snapped up his rifle and fired at the armoured ork, his bolts of plasma hitting the orks' armour itself and melting some of it where the bolts had landed, "Don't know, don't care. Kill it." He said as he continued to fire at the ork which, "I'll keep its attention, charge up a shot and put a hole through it."

"Way ahead of you."

Sam moved from his position away from Aran, continuing to fire at the ork to keep its attention firmly on him. It seemed to have worked as the ork then reared its head in his direction and snapped its twin-linked shoota and started firing.

Sam couldn't help but cringe slightly as he could hear the deafening roars of the machine gun and was only happy that the ork wasn't aware of the notion of trailing your target. He didn't want to know what one of the rounds of that machine gun would do to his shields or armour. Just by the sheer sound it made, it was more like an cannon than a hand-held weapon.

"I'Z GONNA KILL YA HUMIE!" The ork roared as it continued to fire indiscriminately at Sam who kept himself on the move, its crude armour spitting out volumes of thick, black smoke.

Sam kept on the move, not even bothering to get into cover not wanting see whether the ork shoota had some powerful penetrating power to come with the noise it made, 'Well, with the way you're shooting, that's not going to be anytime soon.' He quickly released a grenade from his combat belt and threw it in the direction of the ork, 'When is that thing going to reload? There must be hundreds of casings by its feet by now.'

The grenade bounced on the ground and rolled until it came to a halt right by the orks feet. Having its forward momentum stopped by the orks armoured feet, the green light that had been periodically flashing turned solid and red, before exploding in a flash of light.

"GAH!" The ork screamed out in rage and pain as its visible skin was bathed in explosive plasma and even more of its armour melted onto its skin. This would have killed any other being, but this only served to enrage the ork, "I'M GONNA KILLZ YOU!"

Aran on the other hand didn't think so, "No you won't." The rifleman cooly said as he aimed and fire straight into the orks' head. The round punched a hole straight through the orks head leaving nothing more than a baseball sized hole before it limply fell to the ground unmoving, "I just killed a Warboss," He mused as he lowered his rifle amidst the background sound of gunfire and battle, "Do I get a promotion for that?"

Sam jogged his way back to Aran, "If we got promoted for individual feats like that, then I should get promoted for the sheer fact that I did all the work." He tilted his head in the direction of the fight, "Come on, there's still more orks to kill and everything."

Aran gave a nod of his head and followed after his squadmate.

XxX

From inside the pilot module of his walker, Henri and Muse thinned ork lines with repeated carronades of bolts of plasma that outright killed several masses of orks before they hid something that stopped their trajectory. Orks let out death howls as the plasma gave them deadly, painful burns, some had even gained an unnatural tan of black from nearby plasma fires or when the super-heated plasma fire sailed far too close for them to handle. They had been lucky they didn't immediately catch on fire from the superheated air.

The forward horde of orks that had been separated from the larger horde at the back due to the bombing had stopped being a threat. Now it was just a clean-up operation rather than a battle. The larger horde was still too far away to come and reinforce their fellow green-skins, even then, they would have to contend with suffering heavy strafing runs from Alliance gunships and fighters.

His walker stumbled a bit as it shuddered from the hit of a cannon fire from a rather crude looking tank, "Hey!" Muse cried out, "Watch the paint dammit!" The AI wailed as it immediately highlighted the tank and several others for a missile strike.

From the shoulders of the walker, two missile pods snapped open before several missiles streaked out towards their targets. Henri could feel the smirk of satisfaction from the onboard AI at the resulting explosive fireworks, "Oh yeah, nobody tries to touch my baby."

Henri's eyebrow twitched, 'The hit didn't even go past the shields.' Although he tactfully kept his observation to himself. There was no need to point this out to the AI who was rather over-protective of its 'baby' even though the walker sort of acted as its body more than baby.

A glint of light from the sky caught Henri's attention. He turned his head up to the sky, and his walker's 'head' mimicked his movement to have a look up. He couldn't help but grin at what he saw, "Does this somewhat count as overkill?" He asked as his onboard HUD recognised the falling objects from the sky as friendlies. There were only very few things in the entire Alliance that could be dropped from orbit that weren't missiles or something along them lines. And these were some of them.

"There's no such thing as overkill when it comes to orks." Muse retorted as it took to firing at the orks in its area as its pilot was currently admiring the show of firepower that was about to be invoked on the rest of the green-skins, "This infestation will be put down with extreme prejudice. And anyway," A holographic viewing screen popped up beside Henri, who turned to see it, "This show of firepower makes it easier to bring this planet into Alliance Compliance." The AI finished off as the screen showed the locals who were looking up into the skies as the meteor like object hurtled towards the ground.

"Shock and awe?" Henri suggested as he regained control and continued the fighting.

"Shock and awe."

XxX

"Come on ya lazy gitz!" Warboss Killklaw roared as he lead the charge atop his personalised battlewagon, "Ya fall behind I'll shoot ya myself!" He continued to bellow out his orders amidst the roar of gunfire from the gunships that continued to make passes at his horde of orks.

Just what the hell was going on and where the hell did these new people come from? Didn't those stinking freebootaz say there were going to stick around in orbit and blast any human reinforcements from the skies? Stupid pirates, should never be trusted with anything.

"Boss!" One of his ork boyz' called out as he looked up into the sky, "What's those things?" Like a switch, more than half the orks looked up into the sky.

Killklaw didn't like that, the first time that had happened, his horde had been split into two from some bombardment. He quickly kicked the head of his driver, "Don't stop ya git! Keep driving or else!" He ordered as he looked up into the sky. He squinted his eyes, the other missiles had been smaller than the ones coming down.

In fact, the missiles coming down to the planet didn't at all look like missiles. The fact that they were slowing down was more than enough proof that these things weren't missiles in the slightest.

"The hell are they?" The ork warboss asked out loud with a dumbfounded expression.

When the 'missiles' hit the ground, they landed with a deafening crash, crushing countless orks underneath their weight and the shockwave from their landing causing several other orks to go flying into the distance.

The dust kicked up by their landing started to drift away and Killklaw couldn't help but think that maybe it was time to cut his losses and get away from the planet whilst he still could. He wasn't running away, after all, he could just come back and fight another day with a bigger WAAAGH! with more orks, more shiny dakka and stompas and gargants. Because right now, gargants would come in handy.

From the crater, a leg shot out, crushing orks underneath its thudding footfall, and soon afterwards, a cyan coloured beam of plasma soon followed, melting an untold amount of greenskins as it swept from one side to the other, the ground being made into molten glass by the intense heat.

Slowly but surely with each thudding footsteps, the giant monstrosities that had been dropped from orbit made themselves known. There were five of them in total, three were large metal monsters that were oddly shaped like an insect, a heavily armoured insect, with four legs, the plasma beam originating from its 'head' whilst on its back was a raised scorpion stinger like appendage that whipped out every now and then, crushing and sending orks with each swing of its massive metallic appendage.

The other two were more humanoid in their forms, standing up right but even larger than the insect looking ones. Even more orks were crushed underneath each and everyone of their footfalls, and then more were killed when they were incinerated by the volkite lasers they fired from their shoulder mounted batteries and from their arms, more of the beams were fired, melting green-skins left and right.

This scene of devastation was just one of many across the entire planet. Entire ork hordes or groups found themselves under the unmerciful gazes of the 117th Titan Corps as they worked diligently to purge the planet of any orks along with their ground support units.

Killklaw didn't leave long enough to see the end of the assault as he had been vaporised by one of the humanoid Titans as it made a return sweep of its plasma weaponry. From the skies, the bulk of the Alliance forces were making their way down into the battle. It couldn't even be called a battle anymore, it was now nothing more than a clean-up operation. An operation to destroy or root out any and all ork hold-outs.

* * *

><p>"<em>You people don't deserve the right to be brought underneath the Emperor's protective embrace. You have sullied the perfect form of humanity by engaging with xeno filth...you have allowed the blood of mankind to run with the blood of xenos. For that, you only deserve death at this greatest of all heresies." <em>Inquisitor Hetor Taarn. Ordo Xenos.

Human-Eldar Hybrids: At humanity's first engagement with the Eldar race, many noted that the Eldar were very human-like in appearance, just taller, more graceful and refined than humanity. This observation was viewed with intense dislike and outright rage by the entirety of Eldar who felt that being compared to a 'Mon-keigh' was insulting.

Nonetheless, the more open-minded humans wondered whether it was possible for humans and Eldar to ever reproduce half-human, half-eldar children.

This was mostly a train of thought bred from the fact that Eldar physiology was almost identical to human physiology apart from a few noticeable differences such as the more advanced neurological and cardiac systems, and some would also say, ancient fantasy tales of humans inter-breeding with elves, a mythical race that the Eldar are surprisingly similar too in both looks and attitude. Some would wonder if elves only came into being when primitive humans came across an Eldar on Earth some time in the different past, but that's a different theory altogether.

These theories of inter-breeding continued to be a popular albeit somewhat controversial topic. Although it was eventually lost steam as the years rolled by as it became rather obvious that an opportunity for a human-eldar hybrid to be born was very unlikely and the Eldar genome was to intricate to try and replicate for an artificial birth.

That was until the Federation remnants made contact with an Eldar ship that had been on its way to settle in the far reaches of the galaxy. Soon after making contact and the increased interaction between the two civilisations, a human-eldar hybrid was soon born.

It _did_ turn out that humans and eldar could interbreed after all. But after repeated studies it showed that eight out of ten human-eldar pregnancies resulted in miscarriage or stillbirth. The Eldar and human genes were compatible but not greatly so. But advances in medical technology has reduced this rate at least half.

Human-Eldar hybrids are by description standardly taller than most humans, but smaller than full-blooded eldar. Their ears are more rounded whilst also inheriting their eldar half's more comely features with skin tone being mostly dictated by their human side although their eyes have an exotic range of colours to choose from. They are also more physically capable than humans when it comes to speed, agility etc.

They have a far longer lifespan than normal humans before they even needed to start rejuvenation treatments. The average half-eldar lifespan is considered to be between 800 and 1100 years of age, although others have been recorded to live far longer than that.

Half-eldars' are widely accepted in Alliance space and are regarded as just another race and no discrimination is brought upon them. To any citizen of the Alliance, there's no difference between a half-eldar and a person of Oriental, Black, Caucasian, Arabic descent etc.

Half-eldars have an easier time to reproduce with humans than full-blooded eldars. A centurial census taken by the Alliance every century has reported that currently a little over 15% of Alliance citizens are of Eldar descent.

These descendants benefit from longer lifespans than normal humans among other things. With second generation descendants (Offspring of half-eldar and human) being reported to living well over half a millennia before needing rejuvenant treatment.

It is unknown whether half-eldar and their descendants attract the attention of She Who Thirsts upon their deaths. But all personnel in the armed services of the Alliance are required by regulation and law to wear a spirit stone.

"_Heresy? I haven't heard of that word unless its from a history book."_ Lieutenant Commander Saren Stark. Tier 1 Special Operative of the Strategic Intelligence Division.

Religion & The Alliance: The vast majority of Alliance citizenry can be identified as atheist in their spiritual beliefs, but there is a significant amount that adhere to the Ancient Abrahamic-religions (Islam, Christianity and Judaism) along with the other religions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism. These religions have managed to survive into the far future after having suffered spiritual crisis after spiritual crisis when humanity first made contact with other sentient races in the galaxy.

These crisis' resulted in much of humanity deciding to embrace atheism or in some cases agnosticism at the thought of a higher-power. This train of belief gained more ground when it became quite clear that the Milky Way Galaxy was a very hostile place, making many wonder if there was a higher-power that governed the universe, did that higher-power have a grudge against humanity for placing them in such a hostile environment.

After this, religion was replaced by science, logic and reason, although religion still has an impact on modern day Alliance life in one way or another. Even more so with the Eldar.

This has resulted in Alliance citizenry being rather persistent when it came to matters of faith or spiritual in nature. Many believe one's soul is their own and represents their independence. This has made it...quite difficult for the Ruinous Powers to corrupt the man of the Alliance. Made even more so with knowledge about the Powers and their effects being common knowledge among the citizenry and their adamant refusal to acknowledge those same powers as nothing more than 'Parasites' rather than the 'Gods' their followers play themselves up to be or give up their free will in worship of them.

Although freedom of religion is practised in the Alliance, worship of the Ruinous Powers is strictly outlawed with punishment being death for any followers. And due to the advanced policing and intelligence gathering network of law enforcers and internal security agencies, most cults are rooted out long before they threaten the larger populace. Although cults themselves are few and far in between.

"_We have been friends of humanity long before those synthetics ever came into existence. Frankly, I'm insulted that you would put me into the same pedestal as those monstrosities."_ Tyr. Planetary Security Intelligence.

Men of Stone: The Men of Stone collectively known throughout Alliance space as AIs, can trace their history back into the very early half of the third millenium. History books recall the tale of the very first sentient AI being created on the 4th April 2024.

Early AIs were not 'created' per say from the writing of computer code. Instead, they were based on the brainwaves of the brains of humans who had donated such organs upon their deaths. This was because copying a living brainwave inside a fully living human would result in the death of the subject as the brain would be destroyed.

This method of creating AIs was the norm until the later 8th millenium when the process was more refined to allow living brains to be copied. This resulted in more efficient AIs than ever before, able to do tasks at more than thrice the speed their predecessor generations could do.

Although there were rare wary voices of an AI take-over by some parts of humanity, such wariness wasn't needed. The deep in their logic engines, the AI equivalent of a heart and brain, the three laws of robotics were deeply ingrained into their programming.

Even this failsafe was regarded as unnecessary as an AI would rather terminate their own functions and programming rather than harm their human partners. This devout loyalty by the AIs can be considered to be attributed to the fact that AIs themselves see themselves as partly human due to their origins and creation.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Another chapter. Hoped you like the ground battle. Probably could have been better, but I'll get better along with time and more practice. Gun battles aren't really my forte. :L<strong>

**Well, next chapter will wrap up this introductionary arc and set into motion other things in the wider galaxy. Maybe even the Tau making their moves. Hope you liked those codex snippets.**

**Leave a review. Raiden out.**

****Oh yeah, did you pick up on the insect-y walkers and about what they're based on? If you do, you get a cookie.****


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: I down own Warhammer 40k.**

* * *

><p>If it looked like an occupation, if it smelled like an occupation, then it was an Emperor forsaken occupation. But even with that knowledge, Castor really couldn't do a single thing about it. Whoever these mystery people were, clearly they weren't interested in doing anything to them, hell he hadn't even received reports of them sacrificing people to whatever heathen gods' they prayed too.<p>

He was in fact, receiving reports more along the lines of some of the soldiers of these mysterious group helping his injured soldiers.

But before doing any of that, he had to deal with what he was dealing with in front of him at the moment. The Planetary Governor of the planet, 'And this governor isn't the original one.' The original had died along with the vast majority of the aristocracy when they had immediately decided to take to the space in their private shuttles at the first signs of trouble.

He had to wonder what exactly the governor would have thought would happen when he first received reports of whatever space-borne traffic they had being blown up to kingdom come. Did he think the orks would just let his shuttle go on unmolested?

'Idiot.' Probably, extremely likely the results of too much inbreeding by the nobles. Just like the rest of the other idiots that had taken to space as they tried to leave what looked like a doomed world at the time. But now it wasn't...

Which led back to the original reason for this impromptu meeting with the newly discovered planetary governor. Someone who had been 108th in line the bureaucratic make-up of the planetary government. A young woman who had come from a small noble family.

At least she seemed to keep her head on somewhat when it was pointed out that she was now the new planetary governor. Apart from the nervous habit of hers to be seemingly drinking far too much water for his liking, it was much better that her asking demands from him that he couldn't possibly deliver, e.g. kicking off this new group of people of the planet.

Well, at the moment that is.

She finally managed to get herself together as she sat the cup down for the umpteenth time. She looked like she was in deep thought for a couple of moments before finally speaking, "...Is there nothing you can do?"

Well, he certainly hadn't been expecting that sort of question. But he had to give her a nod of respect for accepting the stark reality in front of them, "Nothing at all."

Their technosorcery was something he had never seen before in his life and he had to slap himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming when he saw through his magnoculars those Dreadnoughts of theirs as they took the fight to the greenskins. And then his jaw might as well have dropped in disbelief when he saw the God-machines of theirs drop in from the sky and bring devastation to the greenskins themselves.

He had nothing in his forces that could take on those machines of destruction. Nothing at all. And that wasn't counting the large airship that was currently floating just out of the town.

The newly instated governor pursed her lips in thought, "Is there anything we can do?" She asked after a while.

Castor shook his head, "Unfortunately not. All we can do is hope that the Imperium sends a relief force." And whilst waiting for that to happen, hope against all hope that these unknowns didn't decide to start killing them or anything else like that.

She looked at him with her tired grey eyes, "And tell me when this relief force would most likely come Colonel." She said, "And don't lie to me." If the Departmento were anything like the Adeptus Terra, then for all sense, she shouldn't even begin to contemplate relief coming here anytime soon.

And by soon, she meant within her lifetime.

The colonel could only shrug, "I'm afraid that is something I don't have the answer to. All we can do is pray to the Emperor for protection."

She let out a sigh before looking down at the table in between them, "I thought as much." Her face scrunched up as she came into thought once more, "...Would it be possible for us to meet with the leaders of these unknowns?" The idea was ludicrous, but if she at least had knowledge that the citizens went going to be harmed in any way, that would go a long way to calming the fears of the people that had only been cheering just a few short hours ago.

Castor could take a guess as to what she was thinking and he couldn't help but commend her. It was rather difficult coming across bureaucrats that thought of others instead of themselves. Those came very few and far in-between.

"Maybe..." The colonel responded, "That's only if they speak our language though." Which was probably very unlikely. This was an unknown faction of the galaxy, they had to be something else to just suddenly be able to speak their language.

The governor stood up, "Then we might as well go find out then." She said with as much conviction as she could muster as she made her way towards the door.

Castor just blinked after her in surprise, before shaking his head out of a stupor and getting himself up from his seat. He just couldn't let her go off on her own like that and thus followed after her. Who knows what might happen?

XxX

Occasionally, in the distance, a flash of light followed by the sound of an explosion of sorts could be seen and heard in the distance. This was mostly the result of the Titans and the other regiments finishing off the last of the ork hold-outs. It seemed as if the ork warboss had died sometime during the battle, reports of orks fighting among themselves had been slowly filtering to them over the past few hours.

Orks fighting among themselves only happened when there wasn't a bigger ork to tell them to shut-up and follow his orders. This infighting made it rather easy for the clean-up brigades to do what they were tasked to do. Casualties were light whilst ork casualties always resulted in total death.

Sam's regiment had been tasked with staying within the settlements limit, as something of a peacekeeping force...a peacekeeping force that the natives didn't know that they had. Himself and his regiments were located to the outskirts of the settlement itself. From what he could tell, some several blocks behind them, the remnants of the native militia were keeping a wary eye on them, whilst also keeping whatever peace they had on their own people.

Occasionally, they had offered medical help to the injured soldiers or to anyone who needed it, but the locals, after fighting with them would refuse. They hadn't even been given a chance to talk to them.

It was at times like this he was rather glad that he was a soldier instead of a diplomat. He doubted he would be able to deal with any of that stuff. Someone else could handle the talking and everything else.

The sound of rumbling thunder attracted his attention overhead. He turned to look at the sky and noticed dark rain clouds slowly forming in the sky. This planet was about to see more rain that it probably had seen in its entire life.

Reason being that the rain wasn't natural at all. It was of the artificial variety. The artificial variety created to sterilise the still living orks around the planet whilst at the same time, destroying all the fungal spores the orks had released during the Waaagh!

Ork spores natured underground and made it rather difficult to be rid off entirely unless if a full-scale planetary cleansing was enacted. In the past, this was enacted through the costly act of setting ablaze the entire planet before coming back and terraforming it from the ground up after an ork infestation.

But with advancements in technology, it meant that more efficient and 'greener' ways to cleanse planets of ork fungal spores became available. And the rain that was about to fall on the planet was one of the many ways that fungal spores were destroyed.

The rain was practically harmless to humans and other sentient species, but it was laced with a biological agent that was similar to a herbicide that was engineered to practically destroy fungal spores, since that was what the spores were; unwanted vegetation that was good for no-one. The fact that when they reached maturity, it meant having to suffer another ork infestation not withstanding.

"Great," Aran muttered as he made a go for the arms of an unmoving ork body, whilst Sam and went for the legs, "They decide to do this now? Who says I want to work in the rain?" He continued to mutter as they picked up the body and began to move it towards a pile of other bodies.

Sam's platoon along with many others was being used as clean-up crew to place ork bodies into a massive pyre that would soon be set alight. Several other pyres were already aflame, even with the sound of thunder overhead, none of the soldiers fanning the flames were worried about the oncoming rain putting out the fire.

It wasn't like a little rain was enough to put it out anyway.

"Man up." Sam remarked as they reached such a pile of bodies before swinging the ork body into it. That particular body becoming one of many, "A little rain never hurt anyone." He finished off as he walked away to go on and take another body for the pyre.

"But I'll get wet."

"I'm not even going to bother deigning that with a response." Sam remarked dryly, "I'll let you figure out what was wrong and stupid with what you just said."

Yeah right. Wet? In their armor? The only part of them that would most likely become wet was their body bodysuit would be the only part of them that would become wet and even then, the bodysuit itself was made to be wet proof.

The two soldiers continued repeating their task, diligently working to reduce the amount of ork corpses in the streets and buildings. The battle had been quick but bloody. His platoon had suffered minimal losses, but they were losses nonetheless. He didn't know anything else about the rest of his company or regiment for that matter. He might find out later when he checked the after-action report.

Not long afterwards, the first droplets of rain started falling to the earth before they increased in frequency. Before long, it was more along the lines of a very heavy shower of rain instead of a light shower at first. The sounds of the droplets hitting his helmet sort of made it rather annoying as the sound reverberated throughout his helmet.

"Heads up, we got a vehicle here."

Sam and Aran stopped what they were doing and turned their attention down the only road that led to their current location. It was difficult to tell what kind of vehicle it was as its forward lights made it difficult to discern what kind of vehicle it was.

Eventually, as it got closer, it became easier to make out details to reveal that it was an armored vehicle that resembled one of the ancient track using armored personnel carriers of ancient Earth but this one seemed to be blocky in design. It seemed to be lightly armored that any decent armor-piercing round would be able to crack it's outer shell and it was rather fast moving as it sped down the road.

It seemed to be the only vehicle coming down the road, but that didn't mean the marines around the area could just suddenly decide to take it easy. Some had already and instinctively gone to take cover and were prepared for anything that showed signs things were about to go south.

"_Stark, Merrin, check it out."_

Sam and Aran just merely glanced at each other before sighing, of course it would be them wouldn't it? They jogged to the side where they had laid down their weapons, picked them up and walked down the road.

As the vehicle came closer, Sam held up his hand in the age old, universal sign that meant stop. It seemed the sign was still recognized even by the natives as the vehicle began to slow down before coming to a halt just in front of the two marines.

A hatch opened at the top of the vehicle to reveal a scarred old man with a rather noticeable artificial eye that glowed red in the darkened night. Sam walked up to the vehicle as he noted the man wore what looked like to be military fatigues, even as damp as they were from the rain. He made sure that his translator was active before speaking, "Can I help you...?" He trailed off as he waited for a name.

Castor was rather surprised when he heard the unknown speak the Low Gothic language, as fluently as he did. How they had managed to learn the language as quickly as they did brought a slew of questions he would have just wanted to be answered. For all intents and purposes, this might as well mean that whoever this faction was, they had been watching Manary or the wider Imperium for Emperor knows' how long.

He quickly managed to get himself together and wiped away the look of surprise from his face as he looked down at the helmeted soldier's orange colored visor, "I'm Colonel Eli Castor, commander of all the Manary PDF forces."

PDF? What the hell did that mean? Did that mean the militia he had seen before fighting against the orks? Well, they did seem to wear what looked like fatigues so they probably were. The ones that weren't volunteers of course.

And this might as well have been taking a shot in the dark here, but he guessed that Manary was either the name of the planet or the settlement they were currently located in. He was placing his money that it was the name of the planet more likely.

Sam gave a nod of acknowledgement and decided to return the greeting, "Private First Class Samuil Stark. How can I be of help Colonel?" Had the chain of command been so decimated that a colonel was in charge of the entire militia force on the planet?

...Samuil Stark? That was his name, dare he say, it sounded almost human like. But what his name sounded like wasn't what he was here about, "There's no easy way for me to say this, but..." He eyed the soldier once more, well, as well as he could due to the visor blocking his features, "Take me to your leader."

XxX

(Deep Space, Eastern Fringes)

A hard kick to the torso of an arms man sends the man stumbling to the ground. He quickly tries to get himself up, only to find weight placed on his abdomen and pressure placed on his neck by a slender arm and a fist held in front of his face.

Noticing his situation, he merely let out a grunt of pain as he spoke, "I yield." He capitulated to his auburn-haired opponent.

His attacker merely nodded before getting of him and made her way towards the edge of the training ring. She let out a sigh as she picked up a towel and began to wipe the sweat and blood from her training spar.

She wiped the tow across her face and wiped away the sweat and slightly wet blood that had bled from her nose. Throwing the towel over her shoulder, she winced slightly as she felt the throbbing pain of several bruises on her body.

Taking it slowly, she then proceeded to remove herself from the ring to allow others to use it for their own training and made her way towards the sides of the training hall and took a seat as she drank some water.

"Here again?" She looked up to see a fair-toned young man make her way towards him, "I don't really see what you find in doing something so unlady-like." He finished off as he indicated towards the various sparring and training going around.

"Milo," She greeted evenly, "I'm surprised you aren't busy drinking yourself into a stupor as usual. It's still early in the day."

Milo stopped short of her and looked down at his sister, "We're in space. Days and nights are pointless to keep track of."

She shrugged and nodded in the direction of the chronometer hanging on the wall, "That says its still the morning. So what do you want?" She finished off as she turned to look back at her brother.

"Father wants to see us dear sister." Milo replied evenly, "No doubt to praise you once more for being an exemplar of the scion he wants. And then promptly admonish me for doing nothing of note other than drink and wile away my hours chasing after the female servants."

She rolled her eyes, "If you don't want that to happen, then get yourself together then." She said as she stood up. He complained every single time that their father came down hard on him, whether its during briefings or during training, and he still acted as flippantly as he wanted, "It's getting tiresome continuing to hear your endless babble about father playing favorites." She admonished her brother as she got up and began to make her way towards the changing rooms.

Milo smiled somewhat ruefully as he walked beside his sister, "As usual, your words cut deep and know how to hurt me without even trying."

"Maybe I wouldn't have to if you finally got yourself together."

"Maybe so." The young man mused nonchalantly, not even sounding seemingly offended with the words his sister was spouting to him, "Well as always, its been a pleasure having this little chat with you Anne, unfortunately, I've got stuff to do and everything before we have to meet with the old taskmaster." He left his sister's side as he made for the exit, "Later." He finished off with an absent wave over his shoulder.

Anne looked at the retreating back of her brother, she might have been mean-spirited with her words, but it was what it was. If this had been any other family, Milo would have found himself send off to serve in one of the institutions of the Imperium for Throne knows how many years, maybe to never be recalled back to try and be of some use to House Belem.

House Belem was one of the many Rogue Trader dynasties that operated within the vast expanses of the Segmentum Ultima, and more accurately, the region of space known as the Eastern Fringes. By trader standards, the dynasty was rather young, only being active for the better part of a century and was still in the midst of trying to make something of itself.

The fact that the founder of the dynasty and the original holder of the Warrant was still the line head would be shown just how young the dynasty was. The dynasty had been relatively prosperous since its founding through the use of relatively minor piracy and other economic ventures, but it was still trying to make a place for itself in the galaxy. It didn't hold any significant influences in any sector, sub-sector or system let alone a planet, and thus members born into the dynasty always felt like they had something to prove.

Well, all but Anne's brother of course. He seemed to neither care that his actions reflected upon the dynasty. If it wasn't for their father constantly looking out for him whenever he did something to attract the attention and generally the ire of the line head and other family members, she was sure that her brother wouldn't have lived long enough to enjoy the majority of his 20s.

As far as she was concerned, if he was going to be a liability, then he should be just cast off, it meant that less credits would have to be spend on food and drink for one useless person who couldn't pull their own weight. It might have sounded cruel, but within the politicking of dynasties, it was only survival of the fittest. After all, if someone showed their skill and worth, it was more than likely that they'll become the next line head, irrelevant of when they were born or their place in the line of succession.

After washing herself, Anne made her way out of the washrooms dressed in a more appropriate clothing of someone of her stature, a naval uniform that was more streamlined to fit her slimmer frame. She made her way through the halls of the cruiser that was filled with various crew men heading to and fro, tending to their duties. Occasionally, on the side was were some of the armsmen or private soldiers stood at the side talking amongst themselves.

She managed to stifle a frown at seeing them do nothing. Even though during voyage, their was nearly nothing for ground personnel to do or accomplish, they could have still managed to go to the training halls and drilled themselves, making sure they were in the best possible shape for combat. One could never know when they would be making a boarding action on a pirate vessel, station or even making land-fall on a barbarous planet filled with savage humans or filthy xenos, maybe, sometimes, even both.

She managed to make her way to one of the onboard tram stations that helped transport personnel and materials across the 5km long cruiser faster and easier than walking itself. Anyone, from officers to the lowliest of ratings or serfs could use the tram, all except for the few registered mutants aboard the ship that were assigned the menial of all the jobs available.

Due to her status as an officer, she was able to get a seat in the front portion of the tram that was more spacious and luxurious than the others. She was neither one for luxuries such as these, but she found that the air in places such as this, as stale as it was, was much better than the one shared with the ratings.

The tram travelled for several minutes, occasionally stopping at some stops to allow people to offload and alight on the tube shaped transport before hurtling forth again. During this time, several other officers had also made their presence known on the tram, but all of them kept their distance away from Anne.

Good.

She liked it that way, it meant she didn't have to bother with useless chatter among colleagues. To them, she might as well have been a heartless and cold bitch, but she just liked to think that she was ruthlessly efficient in everything she did.

She was efficient because she wanted to make sure her father succeeded their grandfather as the next line head. It meant that when his time came to step aside and pass the title onto the next person, she would have a head start than anyone else in the family.

But for that to happen, it meant they had to make some sort of progress on one front of their operations to stand out from her father to stand-out among his brothers and sisters. They had managed to secure trade contracts with planets, but they didn't offer much in terms of resources that could be considered lucrative on other worlds. The uninhabited planets they had found were designated unsupportable of human life or the few ones they did find that could inhabit human life had been filed away, but knowing the Adminstratum, it would be years or decades before a colonization fleet could be sent to colonize it and by then, the governance of that planet might be placed to someone else.

And when it came to archeo-tech...that was harder said that done and their father refused to touch xenos technology or even be involved in its trade. Anne didn't like that, the trading of xeno tech was lucrative, any trader dynasty wanting to make something of themselves had one finger dipped into that market in one way or another. He might have feared garnering the wrath of the Inquisition on them, but as far as she was concerned, all they would have to do is sell it to frontier worlds with runners and disposable pawns and then let it trickle down from there. It would be very unlikely that if the Inquisition even began to investigate where this tech was coming from, they would be hard-pressed to follow whatever trail there was back to them, and who knew? They probably had other smugglers of xeno tech to chase after. Some that had more credit invested in the market.

Eventually, the tram came to a halt at her stop and Anne got up and quickly left the cabin. Her high-heeled boots made a distinct sound as they hit the plasteel floor as she made her way through the various halls of the ship, every now and then, dodging and weaving past other crew members. The ones that were impertinent enough to not step aside of her approach.

At reaching her destination, she stood outside the door for a while before straightening out her clothing and then wrapped the door thrice with her knuckles. She waited for a mere moment before a shout resonated from within.

"Come in."

With that, she did as she was asked and stepped into the captain's quarters, her father's office and living area. It was one of the largest rooms and extensively furnished with furs and beast trophies in the entire cruiser and the largest personal cabin, should have been expected as it did belong to a captain after all.

She made her way towards her father's desk and noted that her brother was already there, and by the look on his face, their father had laid into him again over his behavior. She didn't have to think much or at all, to come to the conclusion of what this telling of was about this time.

Seeing her, Milo gave a small curt nod of greeting as she took a seat beside him. From the other side of the desk, Cedryck Belem looked up from the dataplate that was in his hands to eye his two children.

Cedryck was certainly a large man with broad, muscular shoulders and arms. His dark hair cut short and even, the greying of hair showing the first signs of aging. His firm, purple coloured eyes hovered each form of his two children, his daughter Anne who shared so much of her mother's features, the dark auburn hair, the shape of her face and if it wasn't for her protracted time spent in the Warp, she would have kept her original green coloured eyes. And then Milo, if it wasn't for his mentality, he would have been a carbon copy of himself when he was a young man himself, long, loose black hair and once more, the purple eyes that signified someone as a traveller of the stars.

"Father," Anne greeted with a bow of the head, "You called?" She finished off formally in an even tone of voice.

Cedryck gave a small tilt of the head, inwardly frowning, he would have wished for her to show a little more emotion, but he guessed it was just who she was, "We'll be translating into real space soon." He began as his eyes settled on both children, making sure that he made it seem that he was eyeing none of them, "From our star charts, we'll be entering an uncharted system. I want both of you to be prepared for anything, pirates, xenos, the likes."

Milo raised an eyebrow, "Why bother? Knowing our luck, it'll probably mean that we'll find nothing of note in the system."

Cedryck's eyes snapped to Milo's face, "It doesn't matter what our previous fortunes are like with uncharted systems. I want us prepared. Milo, go to the hangar, make sure your squadrons are prepared to scramble," As flawed as he was, Milo was indeed probably one of the best fighter or bomber pilots that he knew off, and he had potential to soar to even greater heights if he managed to control himself, "Anne-."

"-I know father." Anne cut in, knowing where the direction of the conversation was going in I'll make sure the men are ready for anything." She then stood up from her seat, "If that is all, I'll go tend to my duties." She bowed once more, "At your leave father."

Cedryck nodded his head and Anne took that as a sign to begin to leave the captain's quarters. He didn't even have to take a look at Milo to know that he was hot on his sister's heels. It seemed as if he didn't want to spend as much time in the room with him for as much time as possible. Probably a childish reaction to the telling off he had given him earlier.

At the hissing of his cabins door closing shut, Cedryck turned his attention back to the dataplate. His augmentic right fist tensed slightly as it curled into a fist as he read the message that was displayed on it. It was from his older sibling, it was under the pretence of 'checking-in' with his younger siblings but he knew that it was just a way for him to vainglorious inform them of his successes.

'One of these days...' Cedryck thought to himself before turning his attention elsewhere. It wouldn't do him any good to just sit a mull over things that were outside of his control.

He couldn't help but let out a sigh of dry amusement, Milo had probably been right in one regard, knowing his fortunes, this uncharted system they were travelling too would most likely hold nothing of true value.

He just prayed with his entire might to the Emperor that a stroke of fortune may strike him and change his entire fortunes and maybe put him in the lead when it came to succeeding their father.

XxX

(Manary, Imperial Agri-World)

Human.

By the Golden Throne, they were humans.

In all his wildest thoughts about who this unknowns were, the thought of them being human hadn't even passed his mind. Castor now felt like kicking himself for missing out on the now rather obvious signs now that he thought about it.

The fact that these unknowns had been bipedal, had five digits, that soldiers' _name_ and _rank. Private First Class_? That was a rank some Imperial regiments from some worlds still used in this day and age.

By the Throne, just what did this mean? Did this mean that during the Great Crusade carried out by his Most Holy Emperor, a colony of humans was never brought under Imperial Compliance and then proceeded to seemingly and utterly advance their techno-sorcery without the guidance of the Tech-priests? The thought was ludicrous.

Even though he was seeing it, his mind was either trying valiantly refusing to believe it or was having a hard time believing it. He had been so ingrained in his thoughts that he didn't realise that he had been guided to what looked like some sort of conference room.

Seeing his new surroundings as he noted he last remembered following in stunned silence their guide upon the massive airship, he slowly shook himself out of his stupor. He was rather glad that in his long years as a veteran he had seen many shocking things and quickly got over them unless he wanted to find himself dead.

Although the threat of death wasn't prevalent in this situation, he was still rather embarrassed at the fact that he had been staring off into space for an untold number of time. He quickly brought his arm up and shook the space-eyed governess back into the realm of reality.

It took a few shakes but she eventually managed to come back down from whatever world she had been inhabiting, "C-Colonel..." She stammered out, trying to find the right words to explain just what she was feeling.

Said soldier knew exactly what she wanted to say, "I know."

"But-."

"I _know_." Castor repeated once more with some stress to the last word. This wasn't the time for that, they had to come up with some sort of strategy here for how these talks were going to proceed. He wasn't a politician, he was a soldier, this was her job, not his, "At least we now know who managed to come and save us from the greenskins."

She just nodded, "It seems like it." She said, voice still sounding somewhat distant.

Castor observed her for a while and noted that she was finally coming back down to a sufficient level of reality to proceed, "So how do we handle this?"

She just turned her head to face the older man, "Handle this...?" She repeated slowly, eyes eyeing him with a questioning gaze, "What do you mean?"

Castor started feeling a bad feeling at the bottom of his stomach, "This. I'm a soldier. Not a politician or a diplomat. How do we handle this? Do we have some sort of strategy?" He would be downright surprised if they did have some sort of strategy, as far as he could tell, all the cards were in the hands of these unknown humans. He noticed the look on the governess' face, "Please tell me we have a strategy."

She squirmed in her seat, feeling the gaze Castor was placing on her, "I'm just a bureaucrat. Hell, I was just a glorified clerk with some additional responsibilities and power. I wasn't trained for any sort of diplomatic stuff. It was just how to file away file after file."

Castor looked at her before simply sliding down his seat slowly, "Emperor's Throne, we're screwed." He muttered underneath his breath as he continued to curse his situation from the madness of the Warp and back.

His and the governess attention was then attracted to the silent hiss of the door sliding open. He noticed that two men entered the room. The first was an older male with greying black hair cut short and dark coloured eyes and wore what seemed to be dark blue officers fatigues. He noted their was none of the awards and the likes that was prevalent with Imperial Guard or Navy officers, most would then assume this probably made him incompetent, but he guessed that was more out of practicality than anything else.

Behind him was a young looking man, who seemed like he could be barely considered an adult. He had blackish-brown hair, cut short but not to the standard that it could be considered regulation length, rich violet coloured eyes and was dressed in black fatigues unlike the first. His hands were firmly planted in his pockets as his eyes roamed over the two other people in the room.

At first Castor thought due to his eyes, he was void born but noted that his eyes had too much of a rich texture to them unlike other void born he had seen in his life. And then came the fact that his face was a little too perfect, like he had been sculpted from clay. Dare he say, his features were almost Eldar-like, striking and handsome. But that was impossible, he was human, so he could only guess that this was nothing more than a pretty boy, 'Probably that man's adjutant.' He then noticed that the governess' eyes were firmly planted on the dark-haired youth, 'Crap, don't get all misty-eyed on me now.'

al-Ciani let a small smile cross his lips as he took a seat across the two humans, "I hope we didn't make you wait for long." He motioned to the side were a droid floated into the room from an opening in the wall, "Can I help you to some tea or coffee?"

Castor eyed the drone for a second as it hovered from its position towards them, four non-descript cups in its tray. He shook his head, "Thank you its much appreciated but we're fine." He noted his partner in crime here had something of a disappointed look before that was quickly schooled. The colonel managed to suppress a twitch of the eyebrow as he noted she continued to cast quick glances in the direction of the dark-haired youth, 'Dammit woman, if I can notice, then they can sure as damn well notice too.'

al-Ciani nodded as he waved the droid over to himself and let it pour some coffee for himself. He panned his head in the direction of Saren who just shook his head, nodding, he took his cup and the droid hovered back into the small alcove before resting. He took a quick sip of the coffee and placed it to the side and linked his hands together in front of him on the table, "Why don't we start with some introductions? I'm Major General Luis al-Ciani, commander of this theatre of combat on your planet."

Saren raised a hand, "Lt. Commander Saren Stark. Just your average every day intelligence officer." Technically operative, but that was neither here nor there.

Castor nodded as he took in the names. The aged man was the commanding officer and the man next to him was his spymaster...as young as he was, "I'm Colonel Eli Castor. The commander of all the PDF and volunteer forces of Manary." He said before pausing in thought and speaking once more, "Well, what's left of them anyway."

"Crista Andean, the acting Planetary Governor." Crista introduced herself to the two Alliance officers.

Saren nodded as he took those names to heart. Castor looked like a veteran of many a battles, the scars that dotted his face and the rather noticeable artificial eye to go along with it and he gave himself a pat on the back on being accurate that Crista was nothing more than a civilian. She didn't look or had the air of a soldier, although he had been a bit surprised to learn that she was the acting governor of the planet. She seemed to be a little young, blonde haired and misty eyed and everything. The constant glances in his direction was getting to him a bit though.

al-Ciani nodded his head in confirmation, "If you don't mind me asking," He began, "But what does PDF stand for exactly?"

Crista was quick to answer, much to Castor's chagrin, "Oh, it stands for Planetary Defence Force. They're essentially charged with the protection of the planet from invading forces."

Saren raised an eyebrow, "So a militia?"

Castor could only help but nod his head in confirmation, "Something like that." Just the militia was a full-time job, had better training among various other things, but even then, it was still lower in quality than Guard regiments.

"Sounds somewhat familiar." The violet eyed male mused to himself. Their PDF sounded rather similar to the Colonial Militia, just lacking the equipment by the looks of it.

The battle-hardened colonel turned to look at al-Ciani, "If you don't mind me saying, but you lot don't seem to be Imperials in any sort of manner. I take it you're some kind of unknown human faction aren't you?"

Saren and al-Ciani quickly cast a quick look with each other, before al-Ciani turned his attention back to the colonel, "Imperials?" He repeated with a raised eyebrow whilst at the same time seemingly tasting the word, "Sorry, can't say I or we belong to that faction. We belong to something called the Systems Alliance."

Before they had arrived, al-Ciani had informed the head of this entire operation that the commanding military officer of the planet had made a request to meet with their leader. Even though he could have used a hologram for the meeting, Cole had left the talks to the discretion of al-Ciani, only making points that information about the Alliance should be kept to a minimum whilst at the same time, try and learn as much as possible about their fellow humans.

The data that Saren had retrieved was fragmented at best. All of it was nothing more than administrative data among other things that didn't exactly shed any light on the situation, even the files that Saren had scanned had been inconsequential. All they showed was that this humanity was just a colony, an agricultural world to be more precise of a wider civilisation. The question was, how _large_ was this civilisation and any other vital information.

Castor shook his head in amusement, "I knew the Segmentum was vast and the fringes themselves highly unexplored, but to think that a separate independent human civilisation had prospered out side of Imperial Compliance is rather hard to believe."

Once more, the two Alliance officers shared a look between themselves, "Segmentum?" Saren repeated with a distant sounding tone. He was sure he had seen that word from somewhere and the fringes thing too. He was probably referring to the region of space they were inhabiting.

Castor caught his mild slip of the tongue and quickly eyed Crista to keep her mouth shut. It wouldn't do good for them to just blurt out information like this to unknowns who could very well be hostile, "It's nothing." He could tell by the looks on their faces that his method of passing off that information had failed to work. He decided to quickly change the subject, "Alright, I think I'm going to just go right to the point here," He began as he eyed the two males in front of him, "Is this an occupation?"

Well, that was rather blunt and the only way to answer such a blunt question back was to be rather blunt with the answer itself, "Yes, yes it is." al-Ciani returned evenly and just as blunt as Castor, "The Alliance has a long standing mission that has been active long before it was found to re-assimilate all human colonies back into Alliance Compliance as it expanded into space."

Castor could only frown, "I thought as much." There was the confirmation that this Alliance didn't do just come and save Manary out of the goodness of their hearts, but instead because they were an expansionist faction, much like the Imperium whenever it came across worlds that it wanted or liked.

Crista on the other hand, picked up on something else that was said other than the confirmation that Manary wasn't going to be considered an Imperial world for the foreseeable future, "Excuse me," Her voice attracted the attention of the others, "But what did you mean long before the founding of the Alliance? Does that mean something existed before your Alliance?"

She wanted a history lesson did she? Well, there was no harm about that. No security issues would be involved in just telling her of the history of the Alliance, "Before the Alliance came into existence, it used to be known as the Federation of Man, well the remnants of that governmental body before it had to pretty much implement wide-scale self-exile towards the edges of galactic space to make sure at least some remnant of the human government of the 25th millennium still existed as Earth's colonies rose against her rule one by one or the loyal ones cut off from Earth by warp storms." Saren informed them, telling them the short-hand version of the Alliance's history.

Crista's mouth was agape as she looked across at Saren. Coming from a noble family, as minor as it was, she had been given some of the best education their was. One of her tutors had been a rather passionate man about the history of humanity. He had taught her all he knew about the subject and thus, she knew something's such as the fact that the Age of Strife, the Age that saw the breakdown of the previous united human galaxy spanning civilisation saw its demise during the 25th millennium.

If what this person was saying was the truth, then this Alliance was a remnant of that government that belonged in the age of history known as the Dark Age of Technology. If this was the case, then this all but explained the incredible examples of techno-sorcery that she had been made witness too.

Castor saw the look on Crista's face, "I take it I just missed something important."

Crista could only slowly nod her head, "Something like that."

Even if he did, Castor didn't really care. Instead he turned his attention back in the direction of the soldiers in front of him, "I don't really care about your Alliance or anything, but as something of my gratitude for saving this planet and its inhabitants, I'll just give you a warning." The two Alliance officers now had their full attention on Castor as he spoke, "Don't expect this occupation of yours to last long. When the Orks made landfall, an emergency astropath signal was sent for help to Kar Duniash, it may not be tomorrow, it may not even be a year from now, but eventually, if you don't leave the planet, you'll soon feel the weight of the Imperium fall on your Alliance in its entirety."

The man wasn't joking in his warning. The two Alliance soldiers could tell that his warning had a weight behind it, he had absolute faith that this Imperium had enough force at its disposal to beat them back. Saren was sceptical at best, but it never hurt to be wary but still...

"...Astropath?" He repeated with a confused tone, "What the hell is an Astropath?" It sounded a lot like telepath, just the tele replaced with the astro, "Someone who reads the minds of the stars?" He finished off with traces of amusement in his voice.

"Stark." al-Ciani cut in as he lifted himself off his feet, getting Saren to quickly cool off his features, "Thank you Colonel Castor for the warning, but it would be best to learn that the Alliance rarely runs from anything. Your Imperium can throw whatever it wants at us, and I assure you, we'll be more than ready for whatever reprisals they sent our way. You have only seen the tip of the ice-berg when it comes to the war machine of the Alliance." Along with Saren he then began to make for the door, "Until then, I hope you can assuage your citizens that we mean no harm to them. We're just here to help. Someone will be around to show you the way out." He finished off as he left the conference room.

As he left, al-Ciani couldn't help but note that the Alliance feature was going to be filled with a lot of conflict with this Imperium. Judging from Castor's warning this Imperium had a significant amount of materials to call upon when it came to times of conflict. The same could be said about the Alliance, but there was just something that was nagging him in the back of his head about this thing entirely.

But for now, he had to make a report to Admiral Cole, if an emergency SOS had been sent out from the planet, then Imperial reinforcements could be inbound and the taskforce itself might need reinforcements of its own; in war ships and soldiers.

XxX

(Harvest, Epsilon Nu System, Eastern Fringes)

Harvest was one of many waves newly settled worlds by the Alliance as it continued to spread inwards into the galaxy. At nearly 6000km in diameter, Harvest was a medium-sized planet that shared various similarities with the home world of humanity.

Most of its surface was covered by water surrounding one large continent that served as the largest land-mass on the planet and around it, doted by several smaller land-masses that made up islands. Already, it had a colonist population that was steadily increasing with each new waves of colonists or immigrants from other words with the population nearly 30,000 in the year its been active. With the vast majority of those colonists living in the largest and first settlement on the planet, Midgard.

Due to the fact that it was a frontier world and a newly established colony at that, it had a noticeable military presence, both naval and ground. The naval assets that protected the planet and system compromised of a force of one carrier, two cruisers and their squadrons of frigates.

Aboard the carrier, the SSV _Gettysburg, _the bridge was a flurry of activity as it and the ships in its protection group moved into formation, facing away from the planet. The reason being that the deep space radars had detected an incoming warp signature from outside the system. A warp signature that was reminiscent of the same sought of signature that ships of old emitted when they were travelling through the warp.

"What have you got for me Anders?" Commodore Nielsen asked his XO as he looked at the tactical map of the system being projected on the main holotable.

Anders looked in the direction of his commander from his location at the sensor suite, "Nothing to report apart from the warp signatures sir." He reported before quickly getting something reported to him by one of the officers of the sensor suite, "Apart from the fact that whatever ships that were travelling in warp had now exited outside the system."

"I can see that Anders." Nielsen remarked dryly as two grey icons, signifying unknowns appeared on the tactical map at the edge of the system. From what the sensors could determine, the unknown force had a small force of nine ships. Two cruisers, five frigates and what seemed to be two freighter ships, "How's the situation on the ground?"

At that moment, the _Gettysburg _AI popped up on the side of the tactical map, its avatar being that of a woman dressed in a flowing blue evening dress, with lines of code running through her small body, "Officials have been alerted and civilians are being moved to secure bunkers. Militia forces and the detached Marine regiments are also prepared for ground combat if it occurs."

Nielsen nodded, "Thank you Serena. And HIGHCOM?"

"A priority message has been sent of our encounter. A taskforce is being prepared to for emergency deployment."

Nielsen let out a nod once more, "Good to know. But we're not expecting a fight here."

"If we're not expecting a fight then why do we have our weapons and shielding systems all up and ready for a fight?"

"Shut up Serena." Nielsen muttered, "Our objective is to at least get to know our new arrivals here. We don't want to start a fight over nothing." At that moment, the icons that signified the unknown ships began to move into the system. Nielsen looked down at the icons and narrowed his eyes slightly, "Either they're being cautious and moving slowly on purpose..."

"Or they have really poor sub-light engines." Serena finished off for him, "Your orders sir?"

Nielsen frowned in thought for a second before coming out with a plan, "Inform the _Tomahawk_ and Tiger 1-4 that I have a mission for them. She is to make contact with the new arrivals and make some sort of first contact."

"Orders being relayed. I take it this is the part where we wait?"

* * *

><p><span>Colonial Militia<span>: Much like there Imperial counter-parts, the Colonial Militia serve as the first line of defence for Alliance planets. Although the difference between them and the PDF is that the Colonial Militia is a fully functional military arm that receives the same quality of equipment and training as the main-forces and the vast majority of the time, their numbers are made up of Alliance military reservists along with normal militia men.

They're tasked to hold back planetary assaults of foes until reinforcements arrive to relieve them, and when this is occurred, command of the theatre generally goes to the person with the highest rank, whether it be militia or military. The two services are essentially the same, although command is mostly deferred to military personnel than militia.

Indoctrination: Alliance citizens aren't...free so to speak. They can make choices for themselves, but from the moment they are brought up, whether be it due to their parents, surroundings or their formative educational years, all Alliance citizens are indoctrinated to be loyal to the Alliance and nothing else. Disloyalty and traitors are merely words and ideas to them.

This program of indoctrination was proposed by the Strategic Intelligence Division when it brought up the point that rebellion could still happen in the future when the Federation rebuilt itself. Being a highly liberal society at the time, the leaders of the Remnants immediately cast out that idea as ludicrous as they were not about to rob the free will of the people.

Unfortunately or fortunately depending on who is asked, the SID charter gave it free reign to do whatever was necessary to protect humanity and the Federation, whether it be moral, immoral, ethical or unethical, they were to do what was _absolutely necessary._

Even though Remnant leaders cast the idea aside, the SID went about and did it anyway. From the point the ships carrying the Remnants had set off for the galactic edge. They used everything in their arsenal, albeit they made it extremely subtle to make sure that they were not discovered.

To do this, senior SID officers immediately cast aside the older generations for their targets since they would more than likely notice something was amiss, and thus children were marked as the first targets of indoctrination. When they grew up and had children themselves, the SID knew that they would spouse the ideals of the Alliance to their children along with their continued indoctrination in their school years.

As the years went by, even now, an Alliance society in some form or way has some sort of symbol of Alliance indoctrination, whether it be the Alliance symbol, mottos or words, indoctrination is every where.

The only person in the Alliance who knows of this dark secret is always the Head of SID. No physical record is kept of the operation and whenever the Head passes the secret onto his successor, he is sworn to secrecy and is told of it orally in a secure, sound-proof room, and promptly afterwards, the previous Head dies afterwards of 'natural causes.'

Funnily enough, main Alliance forces and diplomatic services uses indoctrination themselves; Alliance forces when a human world has been brought into Alliance Compliance or by diplomats when they engage themselves in diplomatic proceedings with Imperial worlds when they need to build a base for eventual annexation or conquest.

"_Although we were pushing them back, they made us pay for each metre of ground we took. And when victory seemed like it was inevitable, the sky darkened and from then on, the sounds of my fellow soldiers crying out in pain and horror along with the cracks of cannon fire could only be heard. I was lucky to survive."_ Trooper Makos Fen, 789th Kelsian Rifles. Massacre At Arok Hill. Sibyl Campaign.

CA-15 Lionheart: Command and control.

That's the value that the Lionheart espouses. It's a vast command vehicle that seems more like a light frigate than an air ship. Although void-capable, the Lionheart is best used for terrestrial warfare and is the equivalent of the Imperial Leviathan.

It is capable of carrying tons of supplies, equipment, vehicles and troops and can even act as a mobile carrier for small fighter squadrons. Although its designed to be a command vehicle, their exist another variant of the vehicle that act as mobile assault and carrier ships, alleviating the need for airbases on the ground.

The Lionheart is 248 metres in length, 98 metres in width and 102 metres in height and is carried by four powerful ramjets along with another anti-gravitic engine to be used in emergencies or when it is converted to be a skimmer than an airship. At all times it has a protection of an AI controlled drone swarm and a squad or two of gunships and fighters. Apart from these protections, it also possesses point defence cannons, powerful energy shields for extra protection along with its nano-titanium alloy armour plating and for assault capabilities it has several mounted rail cannons and missile launchers.

(Think of the Assault Airships in the beginning of CoD: Advanced Warfare. I envisioned this based on them.)

"_I've served on more worlds than I care to remember, I've fought foes that would have made lesser men empty their bowls in fear. I have rode upon my tank along side the God-Machines of the Adeptus Mechanicus...but I can honestly say, I felt fear in my heart when I saw these monstrosities come upon the horizon to take down those same God-Machines with laughable ease. With each strike of their weaponry, they seemed to do nothing more than piss them off."_ Colonel Gunna Hreider, 809th Valhallan Armoured. Battle for the Civilised World, Sibylline Lesser. Sibyl Campaign.

Type-S Heavy Assault Platform: The Type-S Heavy Assault Platform colloquially known as the Scorpion, given its name due to its similarity to the creature of Earth, is one of the many types of war machines that are under the control of the Titan Corps. It's the Alliance equivalent of the Warhound-class Titan but somewhat better in nearly all capacities. It is essentially a mobile fortress designed to attack heavily fortified positions or hold down the fort itself and lend nigh-unstoppable heavy support to ground or air troops.

The Scorpions are one of the most powerful armaments within the Alliance war machine, possessing three plasma beam cannons, one mounted in its 'head' and the other in its two 'claws' which are essentially giant beam cannons. It also possess anti-air/troop cannons along its body. Their bodies are massive and multi-layered for different needs, such as vehicle, troop, supply transport, repair station, carrier, & command vehicle etc as they make their way across the battlefield atop six gigantic all-terrain mobile legs that are decisively swift and precise despite their large size and at the back of its body is it's 'stinger' a large metallic appendage that can move at deceptive speeds to smash away foes.

The Scorpion is 52 metres long, 49.5 metres wide and has a height of 33.4 metres and like all Alliance heavy war machines has nano-alloy ceramite armour covered by a reactive plasteel surface that bounces away all but the most powerful of weapons i.e. concentrated fire from more than few companies of Leman Russ tanks or several hits from the Fellblade or Shadow Sword variant of the Baneblade, and that's only after breaching its shields.

It should be noted that there are different variants of the Type-S, each suited for one field of combat compared to another.

(Scarab...but with six legs instead of four and also claws to boot!)

_"Emperor's Throne, it's like fighting the Emperor's very own sons every single damned time with these bastards."_ Lt. Gonville Bromhead, XIII Praetorian Guard. During the Defence of Hive World Sibylline Prime, The Sibyl Campaign.

Powered Assault Armour: Power Armour is standard equipment for soldiers of the Alliance. The very first Power Armour were developed in the 3rd millennium and they were nothing more than exoskeletons that improved the speed, strength and agility of the wearer. This stayed so as time passed by and when humanity ventured into the stars, and came into contact with the violent races of the milky way galaxy, sometimes with races that outclassed them in certain conditions, the development of Power Armour saw a massive increase.

In current service, two main-types of Assault Armour used by Alliance forces. The Aegis Powered Assault Armour and the Excalibur Power Armour. Of the two, the Aegis is used primarily by the Marines to serve and facilitate their role as expeditionary troops. Like all armours, it is composed of a nanocomposite bodysuit that marks the innershell that provides excellent protection to the wearer and an outer shell of nanocomposite titanium alloy that includes various platings that cover the chest, thighs, arms etc etc and various other features which include a personal shield.

The Aegis is bulky, but not to the sheer extent of the Power Armour of the Space Marines but instead is more streamlined. (Think of the GEN2 Power Armours of Halo.)

The Excalibur on the other hand, although it contains the same features as the Aegis, the overall protection is lower than the Aegis due to the fact that the Excalibur is manufactured for billions upon billions of the individuals of the army, rather than the smaller amount of personnel in the Marine Corps. The Excalibur is even more streamlined than the Aegis but still provides an increase into the physical capabilities of its wearer and noticeable protection. It would take several hits or volleys from a lasgun to rip through its shields to finally hit the wearer and even then, the armour itself would still provide suitable protection. (For this one, think of the Marine armour from the Mass Effect 3 trailer, Tack Back The Earth)

* * *

><p><strong>AN: And now we meet our Imperial heroes! One family of the Belem dynasty (OC by the way...like probably many of the characters in the story...) I'll leave it up to your imagination of how this particular family is going to interact with the Alliance.<strong>

**Oh yeah, thought I should involve you guys in this, but anyone who comes up with some Imperial planets, sectors, sub-sectors and systems in the eastern fringes, Imperial Guard regiments, navy ships and officers and soldiers would be much appreciated. In fact, if I get a system and planet before I begin to write the next chapter, I'll make it rather relevant to a story arc in one way or another i.e. The House Belem main go to planet etc etc.**

**Well, I hope you enjoy the chapter.**

**Raiden out.**


	6. Codex Entry

_"As tempting as your offer is, after thinking it over, my response is go frak yourself." _President of the Alliance, Ruth Huwe to Imperial Envoy Pemillia Gedrin. Her recorded response to her 'generous' offer for the Alliance to be brought under Imperial compliance.

The Systems Alliance is the central government that governs and administers its current capital of Gaia and all Alliance colonies and humans and eldar within Alliance space. It was originally formed from the remnants of the Federation government that governed humanity before its collapse and its joining with an eldar exodite colony several millenniums after the Exodus.

The Alliance is a Federal government and therefore practices absolute democracy, with individual colonized planets of the Alliance handling their own internal affairs but ultimately being under the authority of a centralized power. Due to the sheer size of the Alliance during its growth in the last 15,000 years, its impossible to have each planet represantated in the Senate therefore, senators in the Senate are the Imperial equivalent of sector governors.

In the Alliance federal system, citizens are subject to seven levels of government, locally, state, planetary, systemically, sub-sector, sector and then federally.

The progression to the the seat of a Senator from a planetary governor goes from the fact that one has to be voted a planetary governor in the first place, then said governor has to be voted to become the representative of their home system if there's more than one colonised planet in a system in the sub-sector senate, and then proceed from their to the sector senate and then become the sector governor after a vote by the representatives. This form of government allows the Alliance to have at least a voice that represents a group of planets.

Although there is no such thing as a career politician in the Alliance due to the fact that there are no political parties, they were outlawed several millenniums ago when it was noted that said political parties were all but the same difference being the name. A planetary governor serves a term of 10 years as the governor of his planet, then another ten are added if he is made a representative to his sub-sector, sector, senate etc, etc. If not, after the end of their term, the governor can't involve themselves in politics for a period of twenty years.

The government is split into three branches modelled after the old United States of North America. It has a Legislative branch, the law makers that make the laws at federal level and each sector, planet, system etc has its own legislative branch. Executive branch which is composed of the President, the Commander-in-chief of the military, his/her cabinet and other officers who administer and enforce federal law. And finally, the Judicial branch composed of the Supreme court and other federal courts appointed by the president with senate approval review laws and remove those which are considered unconstitutional.

As far as the Alliance is concerned, the Imperium is nothing more than an upstart, despotic and the wrongful ruler of humanity.

Culture & Society: Due to the machinations of the SID during the Exodus, the current generation of Alliance citizens has a strong sense of public service. This has resulted in untold numbers of citizens joining the armed services in one capacity or another, being either Alliance military or the Colonial Militia.

More so than during the time of the Federation when an estimated 11% of humanity during the Federations peak was in its military, the Alliance has over 30% of its citizens in the armed forces and that number is considered to be rising. This has resulted in a somewhat militaristic society, despite the effort of Alliance leaders to curb this tendency.

Although, benefits have risen from this society as the Alliance is purely a meritocracy. One is risen through the ranks either through skill, hard work, determination among various other points and even then, a review is made to make sure said person is the right person for the job. Nepotism or other favouritism such as this are frowned and looked down upon.

Discipline and a work ethic are another benefit which has risen from the slightly militaristic nature of Alliance society. Although rare to a point, some worlds are militaristic to the point that a certain percentage of their citizens are called up for their 'National Service' for a period of time in the Colonial Militia.

Due to increased exposure to the remnants of the eldar exodites, some aspects of their culture has seeped into the rest of Alliance culture, although this is only prevalent in the worlds, around the original exodite world of Aimsir.

The spoken language spoken in the Alliance is called Basic which is the same language that was spoken during the time of the Federation. Apart from some eldar words being loaned from their own lexicon and some deviations due to local cultures on different planets, the language is basically unchanged from 15,000 years ago and thus to most Imperials, Alliance personnel would be speaking fluent High Gothic.

Economy: The Alliance has a large connected economy of vast scale. It's a capitalist mixed economy which is fuelled by the thousands of corporates in each sector, abundant natural resources, high productivity among other things. The fierce competition generated by the companies in each sector allows for a healthy consumer-based environment as they take to the old saying that the 'consumer is the king'.

This competition is even more prevalent in the military sectors as companies vie for lucrative government contracts, prompting them to spend millions in research and development of new technology, armoury and weaponry.

Due to excellent book-keeping helped by advanced AIs at the end of most quarters, the Treasury always finds its reserves increasing in wealth and when it decreases, detailed investigations are launched into why. When the investigation comes across its answer, the cost is reviewed to see if its necessary, if its not, its cut from the treasury's ledger who then proceed to find an alternative that's more cost-proof or productive.

Treasury officials have always wondered what it would take to burst the bank as nothing the Alliance did seemed to make a sizeable dent into its reserves. Not its tax incentives to families to have large families to increase its population, its constant military programs, orders of fleets to be built. But now, that question could be slowly be answered as the Alliance involves itself in the constant wars of the galaxy.

Estimates show that 54.8% of the economy is fuelled by the private sector and 45.2% of the economy fuelled through government initiatives at all levels.

Alliance Demesne: The Alliance demesne isn't under the same limitations as the Imperium. The greatest strategic advantage they have over the Imperium is that the vast majority of the Alliance's territory, including its temporary capital until it has retaken Earth, lies outside the boundaries of the Astronomican. This fact has made Imperial officials less eager to fully initiate a crusade or invasion of Alliance territory.

The Alliance has only recently been active in the Eastern Fringes for a few decades now as it continued to expand inwards into the galaxy, colonizing scores of worlds every couple of years. Not as large as the Imperium of course, current data reveals there are currently 1,839 worlds. including planetary satellites, artificial and natural, in Alliance control and a total population of 665,567,123,903,143 with that number increasing with each second, so at this very moment, it can be considered unreliable.

Alliance territory is split into sectors, these sectors being far larger than their Imperial counterpart to make it easier for administrative duties.

Psykers & Pariahs: There are currently, 498,753 recorded psykers working within any of the confines of the SWD with 1,247 being trained at Irindel to bring the recommended quota of pyskers back to 500,000.

All humans, not including half-eldar but including following generations, are scanned in womb for the psyker gene. If found, it is promptly removed unless more psykers are needed, at then, the baby is born and would soon afterwards 'die' of natural causes when in truth, said child is taken under the supervision of the SWD who then leave said child with the trainers at the Irindel facility to be trained to control their powers after their safety chips are implanted into their heads.

Even with the kill switch implanted into them, it cannot be considered a very good fail-safe and thus the SID literally has an army under its control of people born with the Pariah gene, the Pariah Corps. Due to advanced medical technology, the SID and Alliance at large can increase the frequency to which the gene shows up in the human genome, but it is regulated as Pariahs have an adverse effect on people with eldar blood.

The Pariah Corps are split into two categories, the Greywatch, the holders of the recessive gene and the Blackwatch, the holders of the gene in the more dominant form. Both sets of agents are trained rigorously from birth whilst undergoing chemical, biological and mechanical augmentations making them nigh-superhuman.

To make it easier for Grey and Blackwatch agents to interact with others, especially the somewhat psychically aware eldar hybrids, all agents are given a limiter that reduces their sense of wrongness for other people.

Whenever a psyker is needed in the field in some capacity, it can always be assured that a squad composed of five Pariah Corps members (Three Grey and two Black) is always near...for each psyker. Therefore the more psykers that are needed, the more agents sent forth.

Pariah Corps currently have 500 million registered agents active, with Alliance higher-ups agreeing that more of them are needed as they come across Imperial psykers, Chaos and Daemonic incursions among other things.

Luckily enough, the Alliance can seemingly make more at will...

Education: In Alliance territory, all children receive a mandatory education from the ages of 5 to 16 or 18 depending on the world, system, sector etc, etc. From the age of 12 onwards, they can have a choice with consultation with their parents to either send their children to normal civilian schools, or complete their education in a military school where they could then go on to study further in an Officer Candidate School for a future in the military, Alliance or Colonial.

From the ages of 16/18, students can elect to further their education at universities.

Notable Worlds:

Gaia - Temporary Capital world of the Alliance. Standing at 36,784 km in diameter, it is one of the largest worlds under Alliance control. The average day on Gaia last 30hrs. Due to terraforming activities, the planet is Earth-like in atmosphere, fauna and flora.

Because of its status, Gaia is an economical, political and military hub. It has the largest population of any Alliance planets, vast megalopolis dotting the planet to each joining to become all but a planet spanning ecumenopolis.

Aimsir - Homeworld of the eldar exodites, and has the distinction of having the most half-elder hybrids on the planet. It's home to Irindel, the premier and only place for psykers to be trained under the guidance of the more experienced eldar seers in the use of their warp abilities.

Nepal - Next door neighbour to Aimsir. Holds a large military presence in case of a daemonic outbreak on Aimsir that would need to be put down if the situation arises. Holds a 100,000 strong regiment of Blackwatch members.

Alexander - Alliance Military headquarters named after arguably one of the greatest if not, the greatest human general to have ever lived. Is a large asteroid, three tenths larger than Luna, converted into a military station. Home to more than a dozen fleets in the region and equal to only Gaia in terms of protection and security.

Vulcan and Hephaestus - Industrial worlds located in two systems sitting next to each other. Both systems are abundant in resources and their location allows for further resources to be ferried in from other systems.

Various amounts of orbital shipyards, factories among other production facilities are present on the planets. Both planets combined have a total productivity rate of 15.3% making them one of the most important worlds in Alliance control. The loss of both worlds would mean their productivity would be hard to replace.

Indra - One of the more prominent Alliance powerhouses, equivalent of an Imperial Fortress world. At nearly half the length of Gaia, Indra is rich in resources, titanium to be more precise runnning thousand of metres deep, one of the largest Alliance populations and have a _very_ noticeable military presence with 67% of residents members of the military, the civilians mostly, being dependents or needed civilian personnel.

Notable Personnel

Ruth Huwe - President of the Alliance, Chief of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Alliance and Colonial military. 305 years old but looks like a woman in her middle-ages thanks to the miracles of rejuvenate treatments. Oversaw the initial expansion of the Alliance inwards into the galaxy and its first contact with the Imperium and the following wars that followed.

Admiral of the Fleets Lucas Elthran - The head of all Naval assets and one of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs and military advisor to the President. 487 years old but looks to be in his middle ages. A quarter eldar.

General of the Army Ezra Mildred - The head of the Army. Member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and military advisor to the President. The youngest of the Chiefs at 254 years of age.

General Gewin Tamir- Head of the Marine Corps. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and advisor to the President. 356 years of age, notable for being the highest ranking half-eldar in the military and for nearly seeing out all conflicts from the start of the 41st millennium to the end.

Admiral Serin Orlenda - Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Intelligence Division and principal spymaster for the Alliance. Member of the Joint Chiefs and Vice-Chairman. Slightly older than Ezra at 266 years of age. Known for her rather blunt manner when it came to matters of Alliance defence. Is secretly the one responsible for the sudden increase in military personnel for the Alliance after learning of the vastness of the Imperium and the various threats the galaxy had to offer for Alliance. One of the most dangerous people alive.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I'm guessing for some who expected a chapter so soon, this wasn't what you were expecting? But no worries, this is just a general over-view and I don't really plan on doing this again. Even if I did, it will probably be several chapters later. Any how, have fun with this. On a side note, the Alliance is based on the UNSC (Halo)UEG (Halo)/Systems Alliance (ME)/The Republic (Star Wars)/Some US stuff thrown in their for good measure/and some Starship Troopers themes.**


	7. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: I don't own Warhammer.**

* * *

><p>The bridge of the <em>Reclusive Pioneer<em>, the flag ship that made up Cedryck's fleet of ships was certainly something of a gothic scene. The overhead lights in the room barely managed to give enough light to the crew that called this particular part of their ship home.

Cedryck by now had stopped wondering how the officers, servitors and deckhands ever managed to do what they did as they went about and deckhands ever managed to do to pilot their ships as they seamlessly weaved around the chamber full of arcane mechanisms, making sure that their ship reached its target destination. There were dozens of them, buzzing about like a colony of worker bees, going to and fro, orders being relayed and dataslates being passed from one recipient to the other.

Nonetheless, he didn't care for any of this as he made his way towards the main hololith display, by now, their augurs should have a composite scan of the system, allowing for a three dimensional representation to be made by the bridge crew.

From the his position, he had a very clear view through the main viewing port, and with a quick look, he looked through the port into the blackness of the void. Although difficult to discern, he could already make out that the system had a yellow dwarf star and there was probably three or so planetoids.

"Captain." Durant, his executive officer greeted with a quick two fingered salute to the head as he joined Cedryck at the hololith display.

Durant was a fairly tall man, standing just a couple of inches shorter than his captain. Like Cedryck himself, he was dressed in a naval attire that showed various medals and awards he had gained during his service in the Imperial Navy. In all essence he looked like the grizzled veteran that he held himself as, short greying hair and a couple of scars on his face that he wore proudly, memories of successful or even, unsuccessful boarding engagements. ories of

Cedryck returned the salute with his own, "At ease Durant," He said as he turned his attention back to the hololith display, "How is the fleet?"

Durant set himself beside the captain as he too waited for an image to be displayed, "All ships are reporting green captain. They're all prepared in case we run into any sort of trouble." He finished off his report just in time as the hololith came alive and a shaky image of the system was displayed to them. Durant shook his head at the sight, "Three planets? That's not much."

The taller of the two men let out a wry scoff of amusement, "I once came along a system that held nothing more than an asteroid belt and that's about it." That had been back in the day when he had first took to the stars as one of the trainee officers on his father's travelling through the stars in search of wealth or glory for the Belem dynasty, sometimes even both.

Durant managed to hold back a snort, "An asteroid belt? At least that's something. Back when I was with the Navy, I happened to have taken part in a battle against the Old Enemy in a system that was composed of nothing more than a single ion cloud." His eyes drifted to the side to glance at Cedryck from the corner of his eyes with something of a superior gleam to them, "Now _that's_ empty."

Cedryck couldn't help but let out a laugh at that. It seems this round was his loss, "Fine, fine, I get it, you've seen more things than me." Pressing several buttons and pulling levers on the hololith table brought a full image of one of the planets that was nearest to the _Pioneer _and her fleet, "A gas planet?" Cedryck mused as he looked at the planet that was something of a colour that couldn't choose between either being a sandy yellow or a dusty brown.

Durant rested his hands on the hololith table as he leaned in his head for a closer look, as if the action by itself would give him better ability to analyse the image in front of himself, "Probably," He said as he noted the the singular large, cloud on the planet move slowly across it, "What kind of gas though? That is the all important question."

Cedryck nodded in agreement with his fellow officer and probably closest friend and confidante. Depending on the type of gas that was available on the planet, the Rogue Trader could have honestly hit a gold mine of a potential lucrative mining deal. When it came to being a Trader, at the forefront of any Trader that was worth his or her salt, it was always best to have this simple question come to mind every time something of value was discovered, 'How much money can I make with this?' That was the all important question, anything else was negligible.

With the people of their ilk, it was always in the pursuit of two simple things; power and money. Others would dress their intentions with sayings such as they're in the pursuit of glory for the Imperium or some other drivel, sure there were rare cases where people who held such ideals could be found, but they were more like that of a rare breed.

Power and money. That's what it was to be a Trader. The Warrant of Trade granted to them essentially gave them free reign to go about the galaxy to do whatever they deemed to be beneficial for the Imperium, which in truth, such things could be beneficial for no-one but themselves.

"If you don't mind," A new, slightly synthetic sounding voice floated through the room to them, "Could you get your grubby hands of the display table?"

A minor twitch of the eyebrow was all that showed Durant's reaction to the rather rude request asked of him, especially for someone that was essentially the second-in-command of the entire fleet, "Nazrin..." He said, voice even and professional with the newest addition to the group, "Is that how you ask something of your superior?" Although the question was biting in tone, he still acquiesced to the request/demand that was made of him and removed his hands from the hololiths control table. Tech-priests and their toys.

Nazrin, a man whose age was impossible to tell due to all the augmetics that encrusted nearly his entire face except for the top part of his head moved to the other side of Durant, his red robe, the standard dressing for all members of the Mechanicus, seemed a little too big for him as it dragged across the ground.

"I don't take my orders from you." The tech-priest returned evenly, his eyes not even deigning to look towards Durant himself.

Durant went to retort but a raised hand from Cedryck managed to stop him from saying anything else that could result in even more bickering among his crew. Cedryck himself let out a sigh at the two, "Hold it you two, this isn't the time. You can bicker about whatever you two are going to bicker some other time." Preferably when he was not here. He didn't want to get himself dragged into something that he couldn't particularly care about.

Durant and Nazrin took this chance to glare at each one final time before going back to overlooking the hololith, its shaky and flickering image still targeted towards the nearest planet the _Pioneer_ was closest too. A couple of moments later after Cedryck manipulated the controls of the archaic device, the image was back to that of the entire system that they were currently in.

Durant watched all this and nearly shook his head, he had to wonder what Cedryck had that he didn't have for Nazrin to not even say a thing when he handled the controls of the hololith device. In fact, it seemed as if anyone else other than him wasn't allowed to touch a single piece of equipment that dwelled within the bridge or anywhere else that was important in some form or way.

Cedryck cleared his throat lightly to garner the attentions of the other two men near his station, "Well then, let's begin to-."

The dark-haired man was cut short of sentence by the sudden announcement of an alarmed bridge officer, "Captain, auspexes are reading unknown energy signatures ten kloms from the bow!"

The eyes of Cedryck immediately darted towards the officer, "What sort of energies?"

"Unknown sir," The officer replied as he looked at the visual lectern that was showing the results of the auspex sensors, "I can't make heads or tails of-Wait, something's happening, the energies just spiked!"

"What?"

"Sir, in front of us!"

All movement in the bridge, all except for the servitors that continued to diligently work and continue with their assigned tasks, turned to the forward view port. From the first time that he had looked through it, nothing had changed, that was until a large, circular rupture appeared out of nowhere. It was a mixture of a colour between black and blue, probably some darker tints of purple thrown in their for good measure also and its shape was like that of a large, flat disc. It looked as if something had punched a hole through the fabric of space itself, maybe even the universe.

And four more smaller ruptures appeared beside the larger one.

And at that thought, nearly all the blood inside Cedryck's veins ran cold. Was it possible that another tear in the galaxy, like the Eye of Terror or the Maelstrom was about to form right before his eyes? If so, he had to get his men out of here. Fighting daemons or whatever warp-spawned monstrosities that could come out of that wasn't in his itinerary today.

One couldn't enter battle with the Old Enemy half-cocked.

"Alert all ships to fall back imme-." Once again, Cedryck found his command cut off. This time, not by a bridge crew member, but by what he was seeing right in front of him. From the five ruptures that he was seeing, even though it was difficult to see, he could tell a ship came out and from the smaller ones, four more ships traversed out of the holes, "What?" Were those ruptures nothing more than warp jumps? That couldn't be right. Enacting a warp jump inside a gravity well was impossible.

As soon as the ships had fully emerged from the dark ruptures behind them, the ruptures themselves, as soon as they had appeared, soon disappeared, leaving behind five unknown ships.

From beside him, Cedryck had Durant let out what seemed to be a sigh of relief. It seemed like he hadn't been the only one to think that the ruptures had been the envoy of the arrival of the Old Enemy.

Getting himself together, he immediately decided to get a handle of things, he could already hear some of his communications officers busy asking for orders from himself to give to the fleet, "All ships are to maintain position, don't engage the unknowns!" He bellowed as his eyes continued to look ahead at the unmoving ships that had appeared not so long ago, "And I want every ship with its void shields up, weapons and defences ready!" He didn't need to look in the direction of the communications suite to know that his orders were being faithfully followed by his crew.

"We're not going to launch fighters?" Durant asked from beside him, suddenly wiping the sweat from his brow.

Cedryck frowned as he thought about it before shaking his head, "No, not yet. Instead, have them notified to be ready for launch as quickly as possible." Durant nodded his head and gave a salute as he went to relay the order, "And also inform all the arms men to be prepared for boarders or boarding actions."

Durant turned to look at his captain, "We're going to fight them?"

"Of course." Cedryck said with a hint of a smile on his face. It was then that he remembered that Nazrin was still standing beside him. He turned his head and looked at the tech-priest with a curious look in his eyes, "Nazrin, are you alright?" He asked, wondering what had the tech-priest so enraptured.

The nearly biotic, red clad priest couldn't take his eyes off the ships in the distant. He had to receive a light shake from Cedryck to be brought out of his stupor, "I-I'm sorry, did you say something?" He asked, only giving the commander of the ship and fleet a quick look before having his eyes return to the ships in the distance.

Cedryck could have a guess as to what had Nazrin so enraptured, "I'm asking whether you're alright." He said, the inflection in his voice telling that he either knew or didn't particularly care anymore.

"I'm fine." The priest said, "I'm just amazed." A warp jump inside a gravity well? He had to wonder just what kinds of techsorcery did these unknowns possess. He honestly couldn't wait until he managed to get his hands on one of them, "What are we waiting for? Attack!"

The taller man beside him could only shake his head before letting out a sigh, "It doesn't work like that Nazrin. You know that." He wasn't about to risk the lives of the men and women underneath him and also his ships to satisfy the need for the resident tech-priest to satisfy his need to tinker with unknown technosorcery. Nazrin looked like he was ready to argue his point before a raised hand stopped him, "You'll get all the machinery and technosorcery that you can play with later Nazrin. I can promise you that."

That had been one of the terms of getting the magos and his followers to become the technological experts of his fleet.

Nazrin could only nod his head in acceptance, "I'll hold you too that."

"Captain," Durant's voice shouted from the communication suite, garnering Cedryck's attention as he turned his head to face his executive officer, "Orders have been relayed to the other ships and as you requested, all the fighters and bombers are on stand-by, ready to be launched at any time."

"Good." Cedryck said with a curt nod of the head. Now all he had to do was start thinking of a strategy on how to handle this engagement, "And what of these unknowns?"

Durant turned his head to the side and indicated towards an officer at the sensor suite and gave him a nod. The officer nodded his head and started spewing out details, "They're still holding position ten thousand cloms from our bow. We can't tell whether if they have any weapons systems activated or not sir."

Cedryck frowned but nodded his head in acceptance nonetheless. Until they got themselves into a fight, it would be difficult to tell how their ships operated, "Their classifications?"

"From what we can tell, the group ahead of us consists of one cruiser class ship and four escort class ships."

Nazrin let out a scoff, or what sounded to be like a scoff behind all those augmetics of his, especially the vox-box that had been implanted into his throat to replace his voice box "Five ships? We can take them."

Cedryck cast a quick look in Nazrin's direction, "Five ships we _know_ of. There maybe others simply lying in wait outside of our augurs ranges." Or somewhere where their augurs couldn't detect them. It wouldn't be the first time such a thing was possible. The Eldar did it allar did it all the time.

"Ah captain..." A communications officer spoke up slowly, seemingly unsure about whatever he was going to speak about.

"Yes?"

"I think we're being hailed."

XxX

(Gaia, Sol Invictus System - Presidential Palace)

"This better be good." The President of the Systems Alliance, Ruth Huwe muttered as she sat inside a conference dressed in nothing more than a sleeping gown, in her hand a steaming hot cup of highly concentrated coffee, "It's three in the morning and I was enjoying my sleep." She said as she took a sip of her beverage, her face scrunching up momentarily at the strong taste of the drink before quickly schooling her features.

"And we apologise for that Madame President," Admiral Serin Orlenda spoke as she sat at one side of the table, hands linked in front of her on the table, "Really, we are, but we figured this couldn't wait."

Ruth cast a pensive look in the direction of the Admiral. She couldn't help but respect the woman, not respect gained from fear, which would have been wholly warranted due to the fact that in the entire room, Admiral Orlenda was by far and large, the most dangerous person, if you were her enemy that is.

Luckily for Ruth, she wasn't her enemy, instead, she her boss, "So what's this important matter then?" She asked as she turned her eyes away from her head spy master to the other three members that made up her Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The oldest person in the room, the head of all Naval assets, Admiral Lucas Elthran motioned his hand in the direction of the president, were in front of her, a holographic display popped up, "I believe you were briefed upon our finding of a human colony a few days ago that was under attack by orks, no?"

Ruth nodded her head as she skimmed over the information that the display was showing to her, whilst all the while getting her body the energy it needed from each sip of the caffeine that was being put into her body by the coffee she was drinking, "We dispatched a battlegroup to relieve them of the orks and bring it under Alliance control if I recall."

That had been a busy day, well from her perspective of course. She didn't want to know how busy it was from the military perspective. Getting all those men, vehicles, weapons and ships ready for a combat mission at such a short notice must have have caused all manner of chaos.

Ruth slowly looked up from the display, her grey eyes looking dully at all of the Joint Chiefs, "...Don't tell me this is nothing more than a status update?"

"Something like that." Elthran said, his voice holding some sort of amusement at the situation, "We can happily say that the orks have been pacified and we're now proceeding with integrating the planet into the wider Alliance make-up. There's just a couple of things we have to handle before everything is green." Couple of things such as making sure the planet was secure and that it had enough of a naval and ground presence to deter or turn back any attempt by the sovereign power the colony belonged too whilst turning the citizens of that planet to the guidance of the Alliance.

"It's just another situation has popped up." Orlenda cut in.

Once again, Ruth raised her head to look at the Chiefs, "What kind of situation?"

"One of our frontier colonies made contact with what seemed to be some sort of expeditionary fleet."

Ruth frowned at that bit of information, "A new race?"

If so, where they friendly or hostile? If they were friendly, good, it meant that they didn't have to be wary of sudden attacks but they would still be prepared for any sort of mounting conflict between them if relations turned sour. If they were hostile, it meant that an expeditionary force would have to be mustered to combat these new arrivals, making sure that the entire race became a non-factor in the future, in other words, genocide. The galaxy was a big bad place with dangers seemingly in every direction, one had to be prepared to commit great atrocities for the protection of their entire species. It wasn't as if this would be the first time that she had ordered the complete destruction of an entire race, nor would she be the first president or human leader to do so.

She definitely knew that she wouldn't be the last one either.

"What of the colony? What happened to it?" She continued to speak. A destruction of a colony was always bad news when it came to a political stand-point, simply because the last colony to be destroyed was nearly two centuries ago that had caused the previous president his job. People didn't like that sort of news.

So her worry was part concern for the people of the colony and the other part concern for her job. Getting to the presidency of an inter-stellar civilisation was not easy, along the way, she had made more rivals and enemies than she could care to number.

"Nothing happened to it." Elthran said as he alleviated any fears that she was having, "We somehow managed to make contact with the new arrivals and managed to stop any combat from occurring. Of course as a just in case, reinforcements have been deployed to the area."

"Oh," Ruth let out a sigh, "That's good news. It's rather rare finding friendly aliens nowadays." She finished off with something of a dark joke.

"Ah ma'am," General Ezra Mildred spoke up for the first time from her own seat, "They're not aliens."

"What?"

Ezra repeated herself, "The arrivals at the colony? They're not aliens. They're human."

Orlenda nodded her head as she cut in, "I think they're from the same faction that the planet we saved belongs to." She then shrugged her shoulders, "Well, that's my opinion anyway. We don't have evidence to make such a conclusion."

The President relaxed in her chair as she thought things over. They had saved a planet from orks whilst at the same time annexing it from its own civilisation without knowing next to nothing about said civilisation. Then in the span of a few days, maybe even a couple of hours, they had made contact with a separate group of people that probably, maybe belonged to the same faction.

There was a way to take advantage of this. She knew it and she was confident that everyone in the room knew it. She guessed the others needed her permission to do so before doing anything...well everybody except for Serin.

Ruth was quite confident that the woman had already dispatched her agents and made plans, 'Then I might as well endorse it.' After collecting herself, she turned her attention back to the meeting at hand, "Whatever you think of doing, do it." She said as she eyed every single one of the soldiers in the room, "But I want all of you to co-operate on this one. Having separate missions serves no-one."

The high-ranking soldiers all have a nod at the orders given to them, "We all know that Madame President. We didn't plan on tackling this separately, this does involve the entirety of the Alliance after all." Elthran said with a nod of the head, "This has been in the making for fifteen thousand years."

Ah, the Reclamation. One of the core principles of the Alliance constitution. The Reclamation of all human held worlds and territory, worlds and territory that they had lost as they fled to the stars as their own civilisation fell apart at the seems.

Elthran had been right in that regard, this had all been in the making. The Alliance had been preparing for the Reclamation for millennia. Their children for as long as they could read and write had been told about the greater destiny of the people of the Alliance, the Reclamation, their mission to return human civilisation to the golden age it was before the anarchy of the 25th millennium broke them apart.

"Good," Ruth said with a confident nod of the head, "I want status updates, reports and every other thing that would allow me to be well informed of the situation." If this was the beginning of the Reclamation, she wanted to be at the forefront for as long as possible. Could it be considered selfish that she was going to use such an important point in the history of the Alliance as her own way of marking down her place into the annals of history?

The question was though, were they ready for whatever horrors or abominations this unrelenting and cruel galaxy of theirs had churned out for them whilst they had been in their own little corner of the galaxy?

She for one, didn't feel that this Reclamation was going to be a walk in the park. Things like this never were.

For better or for worse, the Reclamation had already begun.

XxX

(Couple of Days Later - Low Orbit Above Manary)

"Sir, Sierra Group has arrived in system and is currently making their way to the rendezvous point."

From his place on the captain's command chair, Cole looked at the holographic display that was being emitted in front of him, "Good, inform the others of their arrival." He ordered as he lifted himself off his chair and made his way towards the forward viewing port.

"Will do sir."

One Week.

That's how long they had been here, and they had yet to hear hide or hair about the colonial powers of the planet before him that he was looking down on. The fact that a planet would be left all on its own for such a long amount of time without seeing any sort of relief coming their way wouldn't at all be tolerated by any soldier of the Alliance.

One week also happened to be the allowed reaction time to any sort of military emergency, such as an assault on any Alliance world. Even with improvements in slipspace, it was impossible to travel from one great distance to another within the time span of a week, that was why military bases were always located in distances that would allow deployments to take up to one week at most.

With this knowledge in hand, Cole couldn't help but wonder how their fellow humans handled such matters. If the Alliance hadn't turned up when it did, the planet below him would have been turned into an Ork held world where they could have easily reproduced and with the human slaves they had garnered, left the planet to continue their migration of destruction and death.

Well, their loss was their gain. Whether the rulers of this colony eventually managed to react and send a relief force, they would find themselves in a bit of a situation. This planet wasn't theirs anymore, it was now the Alliance's.

And the Alliance was making sure that this planet stayed in Alliance hands, not only for its symbolism because it's the first human colony that was being brought under Alliance Compliance due to its symbolism, but because it was going to be the first of a staging point into reclaiming the rest of humanity that had been scattered throughout the stars without the proper guidance.

From his viewing point, he could already see the budding results of the planet's change into a staging point. He could see the sparks of welding in the distance of space stations of enormous size being built and with the arrival of Sierra Group, it meant that five more Cradle Platforms were in system to continue with the construction of such devices. At the rate they were going, the first station would soon be up and operable within a months time.

Construction hadn't been the only thing that had been happening in the system. Still under the notion that they may see action with the relief force sent by this 'Imperium' that ruled the planet, the initial battlegroup had been reinforced by four more battlegroups of the Sierra-class with the five separate battlegroups being grouped together to create a fleet that consisted of 102 ships with the overall commander being Cole himself.

He didn't know how large the relief force was going to be, but engagements in space tended to be large and brutal affairs in general.

"Admiral," Caesar called out to the admiral, this time not deigning to bring up his holographic avatar, "Our sensors are reporting another warp signature again."

Cole sighed, "From the planet again?"

"Yes sir."

Cole had to let out a sigh. It wasn't a warp signature that could be associated with a space ship entering and exiting the warp, no, it was the type of signature that could be associated with a psyker using their powers by immerse themselves into the Immaterium.

He himself was a bit uneasy about the situation. His first instinct when he had received the information of such a warp energy being drawn to this plane of reality, was to order a dispatch a unit of the Pariah Corps.

Unless it was a sanctioned SWD psyker, Cole himself would have gladly ordered the extermination of such beings. It wasn't until Caesar had pointed out that the signatures their sensors were sensing were more along the lines of being controlled rather than erratic that would signify an untrained psyker.

So the AI had come to the conclusion that this psyker probably was this 'Astropath' that Stark and al-Ciani had heard about in passing during their dealings with the planetary governor and the commander of the militia, in other words, this psyker was nothing more than a harmless messenger.

A messenger who would find that his message's couldn't go anywhere.

The psykers who were the cause of the warp signatures were called Astropaths according to the local lexicon. Those very same psykers were under the watch of a unit of Pariah Corps who were also the reason why they couldn't transmit messages in the first place. The Pariah Corps had essentially cut them off from the Immaterium with their presence alone along with some technological marvels. Of course this entire action was being taken on the secretive side. He didn't want to alarm the locals below of any foul play if he could help it.

He had managed to suppress a snort when he had learned that this Imperium relied on telepathic messages through the warp. He couldn't really laugh or deride their form of interstellar communication, the Federation had used the warp as a medium for communication in the past, although theirs was more technological in nature that through the use of advanced telepathy.

On a side note, he had to wonder how effective their means of communication was? The ebbs and tides of the warp made it difficult for communication, even more so now with the warp being more restless than ever. Well, it wasn't his place to investigate such a thing, so he merely decided to let that slide for now. Information like that could prove to be useful in the future.

But first he had a job to do. Those psykers represented a problem, a problem that had to be taken care off, "Caesar."

"Sir?"

"Get me Commander Stark."

"Yes sir."

XxX

(Planetside)

Crista had been far more busy of late than she ever thought possible. She had always assumed that being the planetary governor meant that one could kick back and relax. After all, having worked underneath the previous governor, she knew the multitudes of workers that he had underneath him and since she was now the governor, she should also be able to kick back and relax because of all those workers now couldn't she?

Unfortunately, she had been very wrong.

Well, she wasn't as wrong as she thought she was. It was true that most governors would be able to relax due to their stations and the workers they had underneath them doing most of the work. But she had happened to assume her governorship right after her planet had come under attack and was now under occupation, in other words, that meant more work than she ever wanted to see.

For the past week, she had been having to deal with all sorts of things, ranging from the concerns of the refugee population, actually, nearly everybody in the entirety of the city about their concerns with the Alliance soldiers that was currently camped in the outer limits of the city.

She had somehow managed to allay their fears that nothing of the violent sort was going to happen to them...probably. But she had her trust in her fellow humans, they seemed to be cordial enough and didn't seem like they wanted to bring any sort of harm towards the people of Manary.

That was good enough for her and should have been good enough for the people. Well some people anyway, the others on the hand demanded more immediate action.

"Are we just going to let a heathen army stay within our city limits!?"

Crista couldn't help but flinch at the volume the question was spoken in. She then quickly schooled her features and tried to look as calm and in control as she could, "Please Deacon, as I'm sure the colonel explained earlier, we can't do anything about them at the moment. The best we can do is sit and wait until help arrives from the Imperium."

The dark clad priest sneered as he looked at the younger woman in front of him, "You plan to let a force of unholy xenos camp in our city and soil this planet that is under the protection of his Most Holiest? That's heresy!"

Crista flinched at hearing the word heresy. Images of what happened to heretics immediately flooded her mind as her face lost a touch of colour of what she was being accused off, "H-Heresy? Don't be absurd Deacon. It can't be heresy if the people who came to help us were humans."

That seemed to pause the the thought of the priest as he looked at Crista, "Humans? What are you on about you little girl?"

Crista didn't know whether to curse herself for blurting out something that was undeniably a secret or letting out a sigh of relief at being able to stop whatever thought the deacon was having at this very moment that probably wouldn't have ended well for herself.

She cleared her throat to gain what little composure she could, "The people who saved us are humans...a lost faction of humans that had somehow managed to not be brought under Imperial Compliance during the Great Crusade or over the past millennia since the Emperor ascended to the Golden Throne." She couldn't help but give herself a mental pat on the back. She didn't lie nor did she tell the truth. She didn't know how the priest would react to being told that the humans were in fact humans from the Golden Age of Technology. She didn't need to deal with that particular headache at this very moment.

On the other hand, Castor wasn't going to be pleased with her for blurting out such a secret, 'But he would understand...wouldn't he?' She hoped he would. She wasn't cut out for any of this. This was far beyond her pay grade or training.

At first, the deacon stood there with a blank look on his face until slowly but surely a look of fervours glee came into expression on his face. He seemingly couldn't hold back his glee borne from whatever feelings he was feeling as he began to pace around the office, "Oh those poor lost children, to be alone in the darkness without the Emperor's light for so long..." He muttered as he continued to walk from left to right, hand behind his back, "They have to be brought back to the true path and be embraced by the Emperor." He immediately turned around and made for the door that led out of the office, "I must gather my fellow priests at once."

Before he had reached the door, the door itself was opened from the other side, "I don't think that would be a good idea." Castor spoke as he stopped the deacon from going any further.

The deacon looked angry and affronted at the news, "What? Why not?"

"Because we don't know anything about them." They were clearly an advanced society, more advanced than themselves by the looks of it. Who was to say religion was forbidden among them? It wouldn't be the first instance such a thing had been come across in the galaxy. And knowing the zealotry that came with the priests of the Ecclesiarchy, Castor guessed that more harm would be done than good, "And there's more important things to worry about than the conversion of others."

"Such as?"

"The fact that we can't seem to get a message to Kar Durniash." Castor replied, a frown visible on his face.

The priest kissed his teeth as he went on a tirade about the planets' resident astropaths, "Those useless fools. They only have on job and they can't even do it?"

Castor kept quiet as the deacon continued his tirade. He had his misgivings about why the astropaths couldn't transmit a message. They had been perfectly able to do so just over a week ago, right before the appearance of their occupiers. With that train of logic, it would also be best to assume that they were responsible for this in some form or way.

How they did it, he didn't know but didn't particularly care. All he knew was now that they were cut off from the rest of the Imperium, at the mercy of these 'Alliance' people. He couldn't really blame them for this, cutting of communications was

Apparently, the news that they were effectively cut off from the rest of the Imperium didn't do anything to startle or panic Crista. Either she had already received her fair share of bad news already or she didn't particularly care anymore, "Well, that's bad." She said flatly before shaking her head, "We can worry about why this is happening some other time. For now, we have thousands of people that are in need of food and places to stay." She waved her hand behind her towards the resident's sprawling grounds that still held a large refugee population, "If we don't do something soon. People are going to start dying in our front garden. Literally."

She had taken a walk through the refugee camp and she had been less than impressed. It smelled, it was dirty, it was all kinds of things that could result in an epidemic of some kind of disease.

And with the only medicae facility that had been located within the city limits having been destroyed by a bombing run during the battle, if an epidemic did start, there wasn't much they could do. The governor's own medicae facility didn't have anywhere near enough supplies to meet the demands of hundreds of people, let alone thousands.

Castor agreed with her for now, they had more pressing concerns, "She's right. At the moment we have to take care of the refugees, then afterwards, you can go try and convert the others." He finished off as he looked at the deacon.

The deacon pursed his lips before sighing, "Very well, me and my priests are ready and willing to assist for wherever you need us."

XxX

Senior Astropath Amelia Ferros let a sigh escape her lips as she pulled herself out of her meditative trance. She had been doing nothing more than meditating for the past week, trying to think as to the reason why all of a sudden, she couldn't transmit messages through the Immaterium like she had been doing for nearly so long of her life. It was as if her link had been cut off.

But it wasn't, she could feel the shifting plane of eldritch energies but she couldn't behold it now like she had been able to for so long of her life.

"Master?" One of her apprentices, Juhan Rada spoke from in front of her, "What is the matter?"

"Nothing is the matter Juhan." Amelia said as she slowly got herself to her feet, long years of dealing with it allowing her to completely ignore the pain her frayed nerves were giving her. She pursed her lips as she thought about it, "Actually everything is the matter Juhan." She said after a while as she began to leave the meditative chamber that she had been in, Juhan diligently following beside her.

The younger telepath hummed in thought, "Could it be that you're thinking about why we can't beheld the Immaterium?"

Amelia allowed an amused sigh to escape her lips, "Nothing escapes your notice does it Juhan?" How such a young boy was so perspective about the things around him she did not know. Maybe he held greater potential to use his abilities more so than her? If that was the case, she had to wonder why he had been posted in such a far off place like Manary, his abilities and potential would have been better of suited at more important locations, "But yes, I do vex about our current situation."

"The colonel has been visiting the facility a lot recently." Which was strange, the choir of astropaths barely had any visitors. Apart from the guards that protected the facility, and the occasional runner that delivered the message they were to transit across the Immaterium, the colonel had been visiting far too frequently.

"Of course he would Juhan, we have just been at the end of a greenskin incursion." Amelia said as she and her companion walked among the winding hallway of the facility towards their destination. Even though she had no eyes to see out of her, she could easily find her way, "He would be curious as to when to expect relief."

At that, Juhan's face scrunched up in thought, "Relief? But didn't we get saved?"

Amelia sighed, "You didn't read the colonel's mind did you Juhan? You know you can't do that."

They were mistrusted as it was. They were only allowed to live simply because they served a function for the Imperium. As long as they controlled themselves, they would be treated as equally as people in their position could be treated, as long as they followed the rules, one of them not reading other people's minds.

Juhan quickly shook his head as if Amelia could see the action, although she could feel it and hear it as Juhan's hair swished back and forth, "Of course not Master! I would never do such a thi-." At that, he stopped. Even Amelia had stopped beside him, "Master, are you there?" He didn't know how, but he couldn't feel Amelia's presence anymore. It was like his Witch Sight had been turned off at the switch and now he couldn't feel the Immaterium anymore.

"I'm right beside you Juhan." Amelia's voice rang out as she raised her hand to place it on Juhan's shoulder, "Are you okay?"

"Y-Yes." He wasn't okay. He was terrified. His only method of sight had been taken away from him and he was living in total darkness. Their were no sounds, none in the slightest and he could only hear the breathing of Amelia beside him. At least her touch brought some measure of security, "W-What's going on?"

Amelia pursed her lips in deep thought as she tried to spread her senses as far as she could, "I don't know Juhan." That was the problem, she didn't understand what was happening. Was a malevolent entity of the warp hunting them? But that was impossible, their link was cut, they couldn't even behold the powers of the warp, so how could a daemon hunt them if it couldn't even clutch them in its foul claws?

"I'm scared."

"I'm right beside you." At that moment, her senses that had increased to make up for her lack of sight over her long years detected a presence. She turned her head in the direction she felt it, "Who are you? Identify yourself!" She couldn't recognise the presence to anyone else in the astropathic choir nor any of the choir's guards.

"Master?" Juhan was now terrified. His master had sensed something he couldn't and the way she had questioned whatever she had sensed, at best, it wasn't friendly, "Ouch!" He let out a slight yelp as he quickly raised his hand to press it on his neck.

Amelia's attention was immediately brought to the young man beside her, "Juhan? What is it?"

"I don't know, something bit me."

"Someth-." She stopped speaking as she felt something prick her on the neck and like her apprentice, by reflex brought her hand up to rub the sore spot. Not long afterwards, she felt the presence move away from them and not soon afterwards, their Witch-Sight returned to the two psykers.

Both master and apprentice turned to look at each other, each with the same thought going through their heads, 'What had just happened?'

XxX

Saren stood in a guardroom overlooking several guardsmen that were currently in a trance as they sat around a break table. Beside him stood the person who had placed them in a trance in the first place, eyes glowing a faint blue as she manipulated the minds of the men in front of her.

Saren couldn't help but admit that he was slightly envious of the girls' ability, if he had the ability to misdirect people, it would be so much easier to do his job. Need to get past a guard? Just misdirect the guy by attracting his attention to something completely irrelevant and merrily walk past.

Well actually he could do that. That and a couple of other things, but it wasn't his way of doing things. He preferred using his own physical abilities rather than his psychic ones. He never liked them anyway. Made everything to easy for his liking.

The door to the guardsroom opened and Saren didn't need to look up to know who it was. The new arrivals made their way across the room before stopping in front of Saren in an orderly fashion and at attention.

"Mission accomplished Commander. Targets have been injected with the virus."

Saren nodded as he eased himself away from the counter that he had been leaning on, "Good, let's head to the extraction point. Kat, you can let them go now." He said, his order directed towards the blonde psyker who had been with him in the room.

"Understood." She said as her eyes loosed the bright blue glow they held previously. Even without her keeping their minds busy, the guards didn't return to full consciousness, Kat being the consummate professional making sure that when they did return to awareness, her and her team would be long gone.

Saren led the way out of the room, "Good job team, now let's get out of here. I don't want us to overstay our welcome." With a mental thought, he was immediately connected to a communications channel towards their mission controller, "Stark here, mission accomplished. Proceeding to extraction point."

"Understood. Dispatching Warbird. Godfather out."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: No codex this time, will do that probably next chapter when there is some action of some sort. Story is progressing alright if I have to say so myself, had to change a few things, but feedback is always welcome. Let's me know what I'm doing right and doing wrong and what to change for the better and all that whatnot.<strong>


End file.
